00:00 - Okay. Let's get started now.

00:01 - And what I'd like to do

00:02 - is go around the horn and have everybody

00:05 - introduce themselves and give two or three sentences

00:07 - about where you're from

00:08 - and what you're early involvement was with cable.

00:12 - George Gardner, can you start?

00:13 - Yes, I'm George Gardner.

00:15 - I connect to my first customer

00:18 - for cable television in December of 1951.

00:22 - That's a long time ago.

00:23 - But I did leave the industry in 1999.

00:29 - Comcast operates the bulk of our systems

00:31 - that we were operating in,

00:33 - and I'm very happy to let them do that.

00:35 - And frankly, I think they're doing a good job.

00:38 - I live in Carlisle, Pennsylvania most of the year.

00:42 - I'm a Fort Lauderdale, Florida resident.

00:45 - Whenever it gets too cold in Pennsylvania, I'm Bob to Dick.

00:52 - I'm from State College, Pennsylvania.

00:55 - I got started in the industry in March of 1965

01:00 - with Center Video, a spinoff of C Corps,

01:05 - and my partner and I, Everett Mundy,

01:07 - formed our own company, telling Media Corp in 1970.

01:12 - I, I spent about eight months of the year

01:15 - in Florida.

01:18 - I'm Bob Charlton.

01:20 - I had the pleasure of installing about 35 or 40 cable systems

01:25 - dating back to about 1950, right in the United States.

01:29 - I live in Lansford, Pennsylvania.

01:32 - I operated originally the Panther Valley

01:35 - Television System,

01:37 - a cable system that serviced a number of communities.

01:41 - I started

01:44 - that system.

01:45 - We merged with Blue Ridge Cable,

01:49 - and I'm supposed to be retired.

01:52 - However, I I'm on the go all the time, mostly

01:56 - in cable and other historical business.

02:01 - Hi, I'm Irene Ganz.

02:03 - My husband and I ventured into cable television in 1984.

02:08 - We built our first cable system in Weatherly, Pennsylvania.

02:12 - We originated in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

02:15 - We're still operating in cable.

02:18 - And this is my husband, Joe.

02:19 - I am Joe Gans.

02:22 - Irene mentioned that we did our joint

02:26 - cable system in 1954, but in 1950, in December of 50,

02:31 - we delivered our first big new mountain city

02:35 - cable system, which was in Hazleton.

02:38 - And at that time, I was one of the chief engineer.

02:40 - I was the chief engineer.

02:42 - And we started out with three channels, and

02:47 - after a couple of hard knocks,

02:49 - we got into multi-channel service and we but

02:53 - as I say, we had our first picture to the first customer

02:57 - in December of 1950, and Glenn Hecker.

03:04 - I started my first job in 1950,

03:07 - around March or April of that year

03:09 - for an outfit called Lycoming Television Corporation.

03:14 - I was their chief engineer,

03:16 - and we built a system in South Williamsport, included

03:20 - on tourism, which is one of the communities close by.

03:24 - And I would like to tell this group here,

03:26 - and I've said this many times, if I knew then what

03:30 - I know today, I would never have got started.

03:37 - I'm stretch math.

03:39 - My first introduction to this industry,

03:42 - which in those days was known

03:44 - as the community antenna industry, was in 1948

03:49 - when I was a staff attorney

03:50 - at the Federal Communications Commission.

03:53 - As time went on, I left the commission.

03:55 - I became and

03:57 - went into the practice of law, private practice.

04:00 - I became the first general counsel and executive secretary

04:04 - of the National Community Television Association.

04:09 - From then on, I had a career

04:12 - for 25 years practicing law

04:15 - where most of my clients were cable people.

04:18 - After that, I was honored with a

04:22 - to be invited to take the and cable

04:25 - center endowed chair at Penn for Penn State University.

04:29 - Endowed Chair in cable television and studies.

04:33 - And I retired from that position

04:36 - in April of this year. Jim

04:41 - I am.

04:41 - Jim Duress and I was part of the medial cable system

04:47 - and the other half with a barcode Tourette's family.

04:50 - And I suppose I could say

04:52 - I got started in cable because I married Eileen,

04:55 - but it was a nice venture and I'm very happy I did it.

05:00 - But we're now I'm now involved with the Pennsylvania

05:05 - Cable Network, and I'm enjoying that very much.

05:11 - I'm John Regas, and

05:14 - really an honor

05:16 - and a pleasure to be here with

05:19 - so many of my friends in the industry.

05:23 - And I grew up together and I'm a chairman

05:28 - and CEO of Adelphia Communications.

05:31 - We're located in Carter's board.

05:34 - We're our first system

05:38 - was built in 1952.

05:41 - We started and hooked up our first customer in 53 and

05:49 - I just would like to say that

05:53 - my parents

05:54 - were Greek immigrants and we chose

05:57 - my brother and I were partners for many years and now I have

06:01 - three sons in the business.

06:03 - And so we chose the word

06:04 - Adelphia, which is a word for brothers.

06:08 - And it's served us well these many years.

06:14 - I'd like to do now is just toss out a question

06:15 - and have anyone who wants to field it

06:18 - take it,

06:18 - and you ought to address

06:20 - your comments to each other and as well as you can't ignore

06:22 - the fact that the cameras are here.

06:23 - And and if one of you says something that the other one

06:27 - wants to comment on,

06:28 - just feel free to jump in and and get the conversation going.

06:32 - What I'd like to ask you to think about is that this tape

06:36 - that we're doing here will go in the cable center,

06:38 - and it could be the 20 years or 50 years or 100 years from now,

06:42 - someone will get out this tape

06:44 - or some form

06:45 - of it and put it in a machine and watch it.

06:48 - And for that person

06:50 - who has no idea that there was a time that there wasn't cable,

06:54 - what would you want them to know about how it got started?

06:57 - George You want to start?

07:00 - The cable industry got started

07:02 - because the television transmitters

07:06 - that the Federal Communications

07:09 - Commission had license to operate

07:12 - would put a signal

07:15 - in about 90% of the homes

07:18 - in the metropolitan area.

07:21 - But then as soon as you got out into the urban areas,

07:24 - I think their standards dropped down to 50% of the homes

07:29 - who would be able to receive television service.

07:32 - And when you got beyond the urban area,

07:36 - they didn't predict any coverage.

07:39 - Possibly Strat would like to help me

07:41 - a little bit with the FCC rules back then,

07:44 - but the engineering rules I think were that

07:47 - it was a 90 and then a 50 or something like that.

07:50 - When you got beyond the coverage area

07:54 - that was predicted for the television stations,

07:58 - the people wanted the television, but there were only

08:01 - certain areas where it was able to deliver a signal.

08:07 - One of those areas was the top of ridges.

08:09 - And that's why Bob, I believe,

08:11 - got started, because he was in the television

08:14 - space, the television receiver sales business,

08:19 - and if I recall, he could sell television sets on the ridge,

08:23 - but he couldn't sell them behind the ridge.

08:25 - So his obvious problem was, how do I sell there?

08:31 - And he devised a method to sell it.

08:34 - Well, in my case,

08:36 - we built our first TV store

08:39 - on ninth Street in Hazleton, which is on top of the mountain.

08:43 - And another thing, George, I guess you remember,

08:47 - Pennsylvania is a mountainous area.

08:49 - And what happened in his on the

08:51 - people on the top of the hill were getting good pictures

08:54 - and we could sell TV sets to certain places, but

08:58 - it was behind in the shadows and I couldn't get any pictures.

09:02 - So then when my instructor

09:05 - and I graduate of a high school

09:07 - told me about a guy named Bob Tartan

09:11 - who had some kind of amplifiers and was bringing pictures

09:14 - in Lansford,

09:15 - and they asked me what I joined with them because I graduated

09:20 - from high school and get a head start balanced cable company.

09:24 - Well, I figured, you know, what's a cable company?

09:27 - I didn't know nothing about it.

09:29 - And just by luck, I went to Lyons, not Lansford,

09:32 - but Pottsville, where Marty Malarkey

09:35 - was a distributor for the local TV sets.

09:38 - And sure enough, I go in there and the first thing you said

09:43 - at this darn cable, it

09:44 - broke down all the time, you know,

09:46 - but they were just installing the cable.

09:48 - And I took a look and I said,

09:50 - I don't know if you know Pottsville.

09:51 - That's way down in the hole. I don't know.

09:53 - Well, you're getting pictures here in Pottsville.

09:56 - And sure enough, he said at

09:57 - time was an RCA equipment, which didn't work too good.

10:01 - But then I understand the Jerrold

10:04 - was pretty far along the way.

10:06 - And so immediately

10:08 - we went in, I joined up with the Hazleton Company

10:12 - and we put in the Jerrold system.

10:14 - We started and we had problems, but we got it working in it.

10:19 - Quite frankly, we got $125 for an insulation and 375 a month

10:25 - in which gave us some of the money to help build it.

10:28 - So some small and hook ups at that time we had a waiting list.

10:32 - You couldn't hook them up fast enough. The people wanted it.

10:35 - I think it's important if you're good.

10:37 - People know 50 years from now why you had to have cable

10:41 - is one of the most important thing

10:42 - is that the television settlement was transferred.

10:45 - It went in a straight line, right.

10:46 - Didn't bend like a radio signal and didn't

10:49 - get down into the hole, you know.

10:51 - So, yeah,

10:51 - I think you've forgotten the reason

10:53 - why cable really became necessary.

10:55 - That's right.

10:56 - The reason that cable became necessary.

10:58 - And I'll defer to Strat here.

11:01 - The FCC put a freeze on transmitting

11:03 - stations in 1948 for about ten years.

11:07 - And therefore, the organizations that built their cable systems

11:11 - in those time in those days

11:13 - didn't have to worry

11:14 - about competition from off the air signals.

11:17 - So that was a big boost as far as the cable industry,

11:20 - I believe it was 1948 when that freeze was put on.

11:24 - Am I right about that strap?

11:26 - Yes, that's correct.

11:27 - The FCC imposed the freeze in 1948

11:31 - because it was experiencing a great deal of cold channel

11:35 - interference, and it realized that the television

11:38 - allocation plan just wasn't going to work.

11:42 - And so they imposed a freeze,

11:45 - quote, for six months, close quote.

11:48 - And it was 1954, not ten year four years.

11:52 - It was 1954 when they finally lifted the freeze.

11:57 - Well, in the meantime, both

12:01 - KATV and commercial television

12:05 - got off and running at the same time.

12:08 - There was at least one and probably

12:11 - several other systems that were operating as early

12:14 - as 1948, very small ones and very tiny ones,

12:18 - which was the year they imposed the freeze.

12:20 - So they had four years of a period

12:24 - when the metropolitan areas had a few stations

12:29 - and out in the hinterlands there were no stations.

12:33 - And so there was a four year period

12:36 - when KATV

12:39 - was able to get a good solid start.

12:42 - And then when the freeze was lifted

12:45 - and they began to build stations again,

12:47 - it took a number of years

12:49 - to get them spread out throughout the entire country.

12:52 - And so the need for C community antenna reception

12:58 - persisted for several years afterward

13:00 - and that was the climate that enabled the industry

13:03 - to get off to a good running start.

13:07 - Well,

13:07 - I'd like to just jump in there and add to that strand. The

13:12 - the freeze was lifted,

13:15 - but the solution was defective.

13:20 - The freeze was lifted and UHF assignments were made

13:26 - to Harrisburg, received for UHF assignments.

13:31 - And the UHF was so poor

13:36 - that it did not get beyond the local area.

13:39 - So the cable television systems were able

13:43 - to provide the signals from more distant stations.

13:46 - But the freeze being lifted

13:50 - merely gave everyone the idea that the problem had been solved

13:54 - when actually just another problem they'd been created

13:57 - well up in Hazleton now is when they lifted the freeze

14:01 - and we got UHF stations, you remember Channel 28 and 16,

14:05 - and they did not

14:06 - come into Hazleton

14:07 - any better than the Philadelphia stations because UHF, as you

14:10 - as bad as it is for the V,

14:13 - which just strictly line of sight, it's even tougher

14:16 - on the UHF because that doesn't put it into the holes.

14:19 - So when they came on the air,

14:21 - they didn't bother us hardly at all.

14:22 - But you also must remember that television sets in

14:26 - those days were unable to receive UHF.

14:28 - Yeah.

14:29 - So in order to have UHF, you had to have a top of the set

14:32 - box converter.

14:33 - So in 1962, the FCC gave Jerrold a contract

14:38 - to do a survey in New York City with regards

14:41 - to the feasibility of UHF versus VHF.

14:45 - And fortunately, I got to be the project engineer on that job.

14:49 - I spent a year in New York City.

14:51 - We built a station in the Empire State Building on Channel 31,

14:56 - which, by the way, is still

14:57 - there and is used by the city of New York is WNYC.

15:01 - We also put a station on top of the George Washington Bridge,

15:05 - and I don't 77, which never worked worth a darn.

15:08 - So we didn't bother with that,

15:10 - but we did 5000 locations, 2500 in Manhattan,

15:14 - and 2500 within 25 miles of the Empire State Building.

15:20 - And in those 5000 homes,

15:23 - we would do a test as to how good the UHF channels were.

15:27 - And we contained

15:27 - compared them to Channel four, which I believe is NBC

15:31 - out of New York

15:32 - and Channel seven, which is ABC out of New York.

15:35 - And we did reasonably well.

15:38 - And in fact,

15:39 - I had 100 black and white television sets and ten colored

15:43 - set made by RCA, which we used as the purpose of that test

15:48 - and based on the work which we did in New York City

15:51 - in 1962, I believe it was 1965.

15:55 - And by the way, the the mentor for that particular system

16:00 - was Robert E Lee, who was a commissioner of the FCC.

16:04 - And by the way,

16:04 - his name doesn't come from Robert

16:06 - Elliott, the general, but rather from

16:09 - Robert Emmet Lee, who was an Irishman.

16:11 - But anyway, based on the survey, which we did in 1965,

16:17 - I believe that's the year the FCC mandated

16:20 - that all television sets would have

16:22 - to be all channel receivers.

16:24 - So that took away the top of the set box.

16:27 - I'm I'm compelled to

16:30 - address the question.

16:33 - Brian Mann.

16:33 - And you mentioned I mentioned a question

16:37 - insofar as the early days.

16:42 - Everybody I say everybody but anybody affiliated affiliated

16:46 - with the possibilities of television

16:50 - wanted to get television down.

16:51 - And they primarily isolated areas.

16:55 - And I'm now addressing myself by

16:59 - some comments.

17:00 - My name, my name was mentioned and

17:05 - not only me, but other

17:07 - television desirable persons, both reception

17:12 - and dealers of television sets, would

17:17 - install antennas.

17:19 - They had have an antenna

17:20 - and they did

17:20 - reach up the mountain to try to get television reception.

17:24 - And I can attest to it.

17:26 - I also installed

17:29 - antennas up the

17:31 - outside the mountain to try to sell these television sets,

17:34 - a number of television dealers and servicemen.

17:37 - We're doing the same thing.

17:39 - And we were using the only thing that we knew at

17:43 - the time was twin lead, the old antenna Twin Lead,

17:48 - which was an open wire, also

17:51 - the out in the western part of the country,

17:55 - they were hoping using open wire or really open wire

18:00 - to extend the television from an area

18:03 - that could be received down into an area that desired it.

18:07 - And we also were doing the same thing.

18:10 - I forgive me for entering and saying I give my father credit.

18:16 - My father was also a radio and television service man.

18:21 - I've been in the radio business since 1925.

18:24 - I built my first crystal set then and

18:26 - stayed in the electronic business all the time and

18:31 - trying to

18:34 - improve reception.

18:35 - I said to my dad, We can sell sets down in here.

18:38 - We'll do the same thing,

18:40 - run this twin layer around the place.

18:42 - No, no, no, no. Bobby said

18:45 - that won't work.

18:46 - He said he had vision enough to see that that was a hedge

18:50 - and they wouldn't have

18:51 - television, but they couldn't guarantee it.

18:54 - And I knew that to be so because the few that I did use

18:58 - and other servicemen did, they were either being

19:02 - cut by someone or by an animal or shoot at or

19:06 - or when it would rain.

19:07 - They didn't have reception and as a result

19:10 - there was very distressed customers.

19:13 - My father would say, We can't afford to give

19:17 - people money back.

19:19 - This is no way to sell television.

19:21 - You sell what you can off of antennas, off the roofs.

19:24 - Don't try to extend it well and little.

19:27 - And I didn't listen to him.

19:28 - I started experimenting with this antenna.

19:31 - But the point I wanted to make was and I do

19:35 - I do some public speaking primarily to children

19:39 - and their question was going way back.

19:42 - Well, did you have any radio in those days in 25?

19:46 - And I said no.

19:47 - I had my first radio, which I built, so I wanted addressed.

19:52 - 50 years from now, people always say, Well, it wasn't.

19:56 - There's always here.

19:57 - No, it wasn't always here.

20:00 - And I'll show up by saying

20:02 - What got me started was experimenting

20:04 - with coaxial cable, which was impervious

20:07 - to destruction and impervious to interference, supposedly,

20:13 - and that that was the beginning of

20:17 - cable. Let me

20:22 - reflect from my perspective

20:26 - in the early days,

20:27 - one thing that I find very interesting,

20:32 - when I was first introduced to the prospect of bringing the

20:37 - TV signals to a car was bought, I had a big fear that, yeah,

20:42 - there was a freeze going on that we talked about

20:46 - and that UHF stations were going to proliferate

20:50 - and VHF stations were going to come closer

20:53 - to rural America.

20:56 - And what I

20:58 - find interesting is here we are 50 years later

21:03 - that if you live in cotton support Pennsylvania

21:08 - and you live in 80% of our community,

21:11 - that you still can't receive a VHF signal or UHF signal

21:17 - and all these fears

21:19 - and thoughts that stations were going to happen

21:22 - in certain parts of America,

21:25 - it still hasn't happened.

21:28 - Irene, is there a story that you would like to know

21:31 - that someone 50 years from now would hear

21:33 - and get an idea of what you went through?

21:37 - And a lot of stories

21:40 - like, well,

21:42 - they can picture it.

21:43 - I can probably say it wasn't TV always here.

21:46 - No, it wasn't.

21:47 - But it's something that you wouldn't really

21:53 - know how to put it, something you wouldn't think about

21:56 - to look at a glass thing and all of a sudden

21:59 - see pictures of movie stars right in your own room.

22:03 - My father was favorite Jack Benny.

22:06 - Benny was his favorite. So one night

22:07 - I found out that Jack Benny was going to be on TV.

22:11 - They called my dad.

22:12 - My mom said, Come on up the house.

22:14 - I have a surprise for you. Oh, my father expected a present.

22:16 - You didn't know what it was going to be

22:18 - when I turned on that TV

22:20 - and he saw Jack Benny in person right on television,

22:24 - he was amazed, amazed, thoroughly amazed.

22:27 - And I liked that.

22:27 - I like I live, I love, I love, I love Lucy.

22:31 - I mean, that's one of my favorites. All right.

22:33 - That television brings everything good

22:35 - into people's lives. You know, happiness and

22:39 - education.

22:40 - And we we go on view on that.

22:42 - We have games on TV now and it's

22:45 - going forward faster than you can imagine.

22:48 - You know, one of the problems we had

22:50 - that was early days is in,

22:53 - like I'd say, 1950, 51 especially well, 50

22:57 - when we started was getting people

23:00 - that believed that cable could work.

23:03 - And fortunately enough, we had the Coryell family,

23:07 - which was wealthy in the coal business up there.

23:11 - And the one night was up in, like I say,

23:14 - I lived on top of the hill and I was able to get them

23:17 - all the New York, New York and Philadelphia stations.

23:21 - And it was a fight that night.

23:22 - And so

23:23 - and he oh, incidentally, before that he tried the local radio

23:28 - owner, radio station owner victim to get it

23:30 - financing to the Tito family, which was big in television,

23:34 - try to get financing from then and they

23:37 - they had no faith that it will never board.

23:40 - So anyhow, I invited the Orioles up to my house

23:43 - and we had the TV set there and it was a fight that night.

23:47 - If you're old, how you do it?

23:49 - I said, Well, I got to that time,

23:51 - I guess about a 35, 40 foot tower on top of the house.

23:54 - So that was able to get the pictures.

23:56 - And then that's when Resolution talked to him.

23:58 - He said, well, why don't we do like Landsburg is doing?

24:01 - They're running a coaxial wire down the mountain.

24:04 - They have.

24:05 - And he mentioned Jerrold amplifiers at the time.

24:08 - And they have pictures and lines for.

24:10 - And that's really, you know, down behind the mountains,

24:14 - the filtrate is no no signals down here.

24:17 - And sure enough,

24:18 - they invest the money in believe it or not,

24:21 - we got our first picture in Hazleton.

24:23 - And again,

24:26 - they put up the financing first.

24:28 - We made them believers that there is cable and so forth.

24:31 - Then as we got the picture into town, it was

24:34 - all you had to do is put the TV sets in a window

24:36 - and people were signing up as best we can get put.

24:39 - I mean, you know, Bob, to that, can you start a conversation

24:42 - what kind of obstacles you had to overcome?

24:44 - And if you think about it, technical regulatory fights with

24:50 - telephone companies or

24:51 - broadcasters, what do you what springs to mind

24:53 - is the kind of hurdles you had to get over?

24:56 - Well, first off,

24:59 - I'm the real rookie here.

25:02 - I started in 65.

25:04 - My partner started in 56.

25:06 - But these guys get started 50, 48, 50, 51.

25:11 - But they're all

25:12 - they've been talking about electronically deprived areas.

25:16 - But you see,

25:18 - when I got in the business in 65,

25:20 - uh, that was true even then.

25:24 - And there was no cable in the metropolitan

25:26 - areas of the country.

25:28 - There was nothing in Washington DC, Baltimore, Miami, Chicago,

25:32 - Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Saint Louis,

25:37 - Phenix, Houston, Dallas.

25:40 - All of those were built for later.

25:43 - And I think there was just starting something

25:46 - in Teleprompter Manhattan in 65 or 66,

25:50 - and they were doing something in San Francisco and perhaps San

25:54 - Jose and maybe somewhere else, I don't know.

25:57 - But I convinced our board of directors

26:01 - three weeks after I started,

26:03 - let me try and get a franchise in Glassboro, Pennsylvania,

26:06 - which was in the metropolitan market of Pittsburgh.

26:11 - And I competed against KDKA and Westinghouse,

26:14 - who were already in the business.

26:15 - People don't know that that they had

26:16 - 35,000 subscribers in 1965 in Georgia.

26:20 - They revealed to us that Georgia

26:23 - and I did not only beat them 18 contests in a row,

26:26 - but got 33 in a row against just about everybody,

26:29 - including Time-Life, who were in the business.

26:32 - And I beat them in Penn Hills

26:35 - and I got 69 franchises out of 75 contests in.

26:40 - And my contribution is not the rural

26:43 - and electronically deprived areas,

26:45 - but bringing cable to the metropolitan areas.

26:48 - I think to this day

26:50 - there are more

26:51 - a higher penetration of cable TV subscribers in Pittsburgh area

26:55 - than there are in any of the top 25 markets in the country.

27:00 - And matter of fact, there's one system today

27:02 - there will be when it's finished.

27:05 - AT&T has a system with approximately

27:07 - 400,000 subscribers on one master antenna.

27:11 - And the thing that I'm proud of

27:12 - is that when I was getting these franchises,

27:15 - I gave them all the blue sky,

27:17 - all the things that are happening today.

27:18 - But I told them that was blue sky,

27:20 - and I predicted that one day

27:22 - there would be one system and it would

27:24 - they would be doing the things they're doing today.

27:27 - But I told them that was a long way off

27:30 - and it's come to pass.

27:32 - In response to the question that you asked,

27:34 - I'm sure everybody around this table will remember

27:38 - that in the very beginning the telephone company

27:41 - wouldn't permit you on their polls at all

27:43 - if you were going to use a poll system.

27:45 - It had to be a power system because

27:47 - there was no way going to latch on to telephone polls.

27:50 - But in addition to that, you mentioned the fact

27:53 - that there was a fight with the broadcasters,

27:56 - because the broadcasters viewed the cable industry as an outfit

27:59 - that was stealing their signals and paying them.

28:02 - And that's where the word community cable television came

28:05 - from, because we really didn't supply television pictures.

28:10 - What we did was remote, the individuals antenna,

28:13 - and that's

28:14 - how cable got its original name was basically on that premise.

28:18 - So yes,

28:18 - there were a lot of legal fights in the very beginning,

28:21 - fights with telephone and fights with the broadcasters as well.

28:25 - 1966,

28:28 - AT&T informed all of their subsidiaries

28:34 - not to grant any further pull attachment agreements,

28:38 - but maybe people remember this because they were going to redo

28:41 - their agreement.

28:43 - So there was a period of one or two years where you could not

28:47 - get an agreement from any of the Bell companies.

28:52 - And at that time, some of the independent

28:54 - companies refused the deal.

28:56 - And there were people who were putting up their own poles,

28:59 - putting cable on trees and fences.

29:02 - I remember one guy coming to me in a little town called Howard.

29:07 - He couldn't get the

29:08 - pole attachment agreement

29:09 - from an independent telephone company,

29:11 - and I had the presence of mind to sell them,

29:13 - go check to see their franchise.

29:16 - These franchises that the phone companies

29:18 - have usually for 50 years or very long.

29:21 - So happens the franchise was about to

29:23 - expire or had expired for the film.

29:27 - They had known it was he called it to their attention.

29:29 - He had no problem getting on the killing of the poles.

29:34 - But really that was the

29:36 - biggest job for from 1965 to about 1968 or 69,

29:42 - getting on the poles,

29:43 - especially in the Metropolitan urban areas

29:46 - where the power companies, if you recall, in Pennsylvania,

29:49 - were fighting with the phone companies about

29:52 - who should handle

29:54 - the space on the poles.

29:56 - The power companies actually owned most of the poles,

30:00 - but the phone companies believed that they had the right

30:04 - to rent the communications space.

30:07 - So then there was again a fight between the two of them

30:09 - and there was a hold up because of that.

30:13 - On that subject, you may find interesting,

30:15 - I just related just as very day

30:19 - a story about AT&T.

30:22 - I wanted to get on AT&T.

30:25 - I didn't know it was an AT&T poll.

30:27 - I was operating in

30:30 - an area that was a private telephone company,

30:33 - operated really by the coal company in the area.

30:37 - But some of the executives

30:38 - had built this carbon telephone company

30:42 - in service of the Panther Valley, Lance Ford,

30:44 - somebody else called out NASCAR and the whole area.

30:47 - And I must give credit to some of those people.

30:52 - It was easy to get cooperation with as an example.

30:56 - This is one of the examples with the telephone company

30:59 - because I told them my idea.

31:02 - I what I want to do is build a system cable.

31:06 - Geez, that'd be great.

31:07 - They get what can we do to help you out?

31:10 - They were inviting me because they wanted television

31:13 - the same thing happened.

31:14 - That's how I my attorney got so interested.

31:18 - He lived in Summit Hill.

31:19 - I had sold him a television

31:20 - set, was building a home in Lansford and said, Bob,

31:25 - what do you got?

31:25 - What am I going to do for television?

31:27 - I said, I'm get this idea.

31:29 - Hey, I'll give you all the help I can.

31:31 - I be glad to help going back on this one.

31:34 - I wanted to get on a few poles and I thought it was

31:38 - we always call them the telephone poles,

31:40 - but it happened to be an AT&T long, long line

31:45 - that came in from somewhere and down in the lands board.

31:48 - So what happened was

31:51 - the the

31:55 - local boys telephone president said,

31:59 - we've got a contact for you to get permission on those.

32:02 - We've got to contact AT&T. I said, what? Why?

32:05 - Why them?

32:05 - I didn't know because they have jurisdiction over those poles.

32:10 - So as a result,

32:13 - they set up a meeting.

32:15 - And I already had made the attachment

32:17 - because my early days with the power company,

32:21 - I had cooperation with the Vice President of Paul Attachments,

32:27 - who happened to have been

32:29 - a friend of Marty Malachy's, and he heard about what

32:32 - I was doing.

32:33 - He came over to see it

32:34 - and he ran back and told Marty Malarkey,

32:37 - Hey, that's what you can do and lands for it.

32:39 - And he told me, Make attachments to the poles,

32:42 - give me the poll numbers and I'll get on.

32:44 - So he was cooperative.

32:46 - They were anxious at that time was 1950 to get loading

32:50 - power loading trolley, and they used to sell

32:53 - television, things like that.

32:55 - So at the same time, I had cooperation from the power

32:59 - company,

32:59 - made these attachments and later on made the polar agreement.

33:04 - But with it for the phone company,

33:06 - they said, You go ahead on the poles,

33:08 - but you're going to have to go below us.

33:11 - You can't go above.

33:13 - Everything was built.

33:14 - That was the early days.

33:16 - Where are some of the system that I had built

33:18 - there was below?

33:20 - Well, that created more problems to get clearance bases better.

33:23 - But that's what that's what they said.

33:25 - And they said we've been in touch with AT&T to ask

33:29 - if there's any for an attachment specs that you might have.

33:34 - And they said,

33:35 - we don't know what they're doing,

33:36 - but we better come up and look and see. And they did.

33:40 - I entertained the vice president of

33:43 - I always call him Paul Attachment for AT&T

33:47 - came up from Wall Street office

33:50 - and he brought along three or four other engineers,

33:53 - spent a day up there looking and see what I was doing.

33:56 - And they said, Well, there's one thing

34:00 - I think you're doing all right.

34:01 - I see you're doing good.

34:03 - Paul Construction. I also employed

34:07 - called Paul Line people who knew what they were doing.

34:09 - They worked for the call company

34:11 - and I and they did it on their off time.

34:14 - So we didn't do a sloppy operation.

34:16 - And incidentally, the the phone company

34:21 - helped me to the extent I said I'm going

34:24 - to have to suspend this on messenger.

34:27 - And he said, We're using a cable last year, let's try it.

34:32 - And it wouldn't work.

34:33 - And they went to the trouble of

34:36 - of their spinner

34:38 - getting revamped a bit to use the coax cable

34:42 - and use the last year the wire I was using

34:44 - so I gave I gave them a lot of credit

34:48 - and I had a lot of help, professional, good quality help.

34:52 - And whenever AT&T and came up, they said, oh,

34:56 - the construction is good.

34:57 - I see this, this fellow mean business.

35:01 - And I got talking to him when he did about relieve

35:05 - he said, well, we're going to drop specs for falling

35:08 - into foreign attachments other than telephone.

35:12 - But he said one thing

35:15 - we will you'll have to keep above

35:17 - all telephone as far as we're concerned.

35:20 - And I said casually, I just said,

35:24 - you know, that's something I I'm amazed why AT&T

35:28 - you've got all your facilities

35:30 - and all your engineering and all of your development,

35:33 - why they couldn't think of something like this.

35:35 - He said, Oh, this is nothing.

35:37 - This is only a hedge.

35:38 - He said, In a couple of years you won't need this.

35:40 - You'll be tearing it down off the poles.

35:43 - I never copy his name.

35:44 - I never recorded it.

35:46 - I wish I had it today.

35:49 - And to

35:49 - say you were talking about problems in the early days.

35:52 - One thing was getting on Apollos was a problem,

35:55 - but the antennas and stuff were usually up on a mountain

35:59 - somewhere and there's no power there. So

36:03 - in my case, what we did attach to power

36:05 - when we put our own power line going up,

36:07 - he had it attached to trees and you can see the problems

36:11 - we had there.

36:12 - And then come the bad weather, stuff like that.

36:15 - The wires were knocked down, but

36:18 - that there were some of the headaches and

36:20 - I guess it took us, what, about four

36:22 - or five years the power company run the poles.

36:26 - But there was some of the headaches

36:27 - as well as the railways

36:29 - and Bobby are saying that made you go below the telephone line

36:32 - or did they change the spec to go?

36:34 - But no, we started out the local

36:37 - telephone company said you can't get above us

36:40 - or the power company, you must be below it.

36:43 - So we put our installations in quite a few, quite a few

36:48 - potential subscribers just below until finally AT&T come in.

36:53 - We were waiting for them to come in to set specs

36:56 - and they set the specs for the local telephone company.

36:59 - Local telephone company always looked to Bell

37:02 - or AT&T for their specs and they followed them

37:05 - and it was them that design they above

37:09 - and they had the specs

37:10 - and then that's when we had a forum on agreement.

37:13 - Then also

37:13 - the local telephone company gave us a form on agreement

37:16 - and matter of fact that

37:19 - Bob LaRue

37:20 - asked for one once and I sent Bob LaRue.

37:24 - That was one of the NCTA attorneys.

37:28 - Yeah.

37:28 - Got knows where he'd gone for us now, but Bob Drew sent back

37:32 - a following letter.

37:33 - Bob, this is the best contract I've ever seen,

37:37 - but it was one that I helped develop for the phone company.

37:40 - It was worth a phone call.

37:41 - Did did the rest of you have good relations

37:43 - with the phone company or the power company

37:45 - like Bob did, or were there problems?

37:47 - Well, it

37:49 - I think they're forgetting

37:52 - not only did AT&T refuse to give out an agreement,

37:56 - but they decided to get in the business.

37:59 - And this is when

38:00 - they started leasebacks throughout the whole country.

38:04 - And I guess somebody.

38:07 - Mr. BARCO In Pennsylvania association

38:09 - defeated their attempts here in Pennsylvania,

38:14 - and then they also lost in various other states.

38:17 - Am I right?

38:17 - So you know, they lost leaseback capabilities in Ohio

38:22 - and Michigan and what have you, and they abandoned their plans

38:27 - of leasebacks.

38:28 - What the country

38:29 - so that's what held things up in a great many areas.

38:34 - And there were at least spells back

38:35 - built in Pennsylvania,

38:36 - not too many, but there were some,

38:38 - but there were quite a few build in the state of Ohio.

38:41 - Could you explain a leaseback.

38:42 - You can excuse me if I may.

38:45 - I was going to respond to your question

38:48 - because Bob's story is is very interesting.

38:52 - And in my experience and not as an operator,

38:55 - but as an attorney who worked with these people

38:58 - and listened to their complaints and so on, Bob's

39:01 - cooperative experience with AT&T and the telephone

39:06 - companies was by far the exception in the industry.

39:10 - By and large, AT&T

39:13 - around the country was simply resisting

39:16 - in every possible way, allowing

39:20 - KATV to get on the poles.

39:23 - Finally, they simply had to do it

39:25 - as a result of public pressure in the individual communities.

39:30 - But even then they dragged their feet with the access

39:34 - they make ready cost to you, man around this table?

39:37 - No, far better than I do.

39:40 - How difficult that problem was.

39:43 - And I've often been asked the question, well, why

39:47 - didn't AT&T get in and provide their service themselves?

39:50 - And there were really two answers to it.

39:55 - The first

39:55 - was that this was the end of World War Two,

39:58 - and they had a telephone backlog that took them ten years

40:02 - to catch up with and they simply could not address

40:06 - assign their resources to that.

40:10 - The other reason was like

40:12 - an awful lot of people, maybe including some of us around

40:15 - this table, they didn't think the industry was going to last

40:18 - and they didn't want to invest their resources in it.

40:24 - But again, I will repeat, Bob's experience

40:28 - to the best of my knowledge is an exception.

40:32 - And he was very fortunate.

40:34 - May I just

40:36 - punctuate that by saying

40:38 - this was back in early 50 and by 1951, late

40:43 - 51 and 52, the telephone companies

40:47 - immediately became antagonistic, not the power company.

40:51 - The power companies were cooperative

40:53 - because they were glad for the load, additional load.

40:57 - But the telephone companies were give me.

40:59 - And whenever I went with Gerald, that was half of our problems

41:03 - trying to get it, particularly in New England.

41:06 - They just refused, wouldn't get in an air to things.

41:09 - But what I was speaking of was the very early few days,

41:14 - a few months,

41:15 - and that was my experiences stretch where it's true that the

41:20 - AT&T could not get it into the business directly

41:23 - because of the antitrust case that they lost.

41:27 - Well, that was a number of years later.

41:29 - Yes, right.

41:30 - I'm just addressing the the time the immediate

41:34 - early history of the industry. Yeah. Yes.

41:36 - There was a time came

41:38 - when AT&T agreed not to get into any business

41:41 - for which they didn't have a public utility tariffs

41:45 - on file with appropriate regulatory commissions.

41:48 - But, but that was later on.

41:50 - Yeah but but they did try to get it leasebacks

41:54 - and at least back. Yes.

41:55 - The question was they would build

41:57 - and own the cable system and lease them to an operator.

42:00 - Well, that is true.

42:02 - But they got out of the

42:03 - leaseback business also after they agreed

42:07 - not to provide any service that was in the public

42:10 - utility communication service.

42:12 - Well, let's talk about that

42:14 - leaseback business just a little bit more

42:17 - from the cable operators standpoint,

42:19 - because I was involved in the lease back,

42:22 - I was attempting to get a franchise in Newburgh,

42:25 - New York, and I was sitting in the

42:29 - New York telephone zone manager's office

42:33 - and he was on the telephone

42:37 - in the middle of our agreement.

42:39 - We worked through the agreement

42:41 - that they had the attachment agreement,

42:43 - and then he got an urgent phone call.

42:46 - And when he came back,

42:48 - the agreement was not on the table anymore.

42:51 - So I presume that was in 1965 exactly

42:54 - when Bob's talking about it.

42:56 - But since we couldn't get a pole attachment agreement,

43:01 - we did accept the lease back.

43:04 - And that lease back was outrageous.

43:07 - It was so expensive, it was unbelievable.

43:10 - And they had to make all the into the home

43:14 - and they did all the maintenance on it.

43:17 - And if you had a service call and you went to the home

43:22 - and the obvious problem was with the telephone company system,

43:28 - if it was

43:28 - before 8:00 in the evening, they would respond

43:32 - on double overtime or whatever their rate was.

43:35 - I forgot what they called it, but it was outrageous.

43:38 - And if it was after 8:00 in the evening,

43:41 - they would come out the next morning.

43:43 - So it was obviously very antagonistic to the customer.

43:50 - The cable

43:50 - operator had a terrible problem explaining to the customer,

43:54 - yeah, we'll be back tomorrow and that type of thing.

43:57 - But aside from the leaseback, I'd like to just go back

44:02 - to something else that Bob to Doug touched on there

44:05 - when he was building in the Pittsburgh area,

44:10 - John Regas and I built a system in Union Town

44:13 - and we had a unique situation there.

44:17 - Possibly you can help me with this a little bit, John.

44:19 - If I ever get some of the details of

44:23 - and I also want to mention one of the details

44:25 - about the equipment.

44:26 - So when I get through with this, I'll mention that

44:30 - we had a

44:33 - very good cooperation from the television stations

44:37 - in Pittsburgh, believe it or not,

44:39 - because they found that they had to operate translators.

44:42 - Pittsburgh is a very difficult town

44:44 - to get any sort of television off the air in

44:47 - or was at that time, because it's just a bunch of valleys.

44:51 - And so the television stations

44:54 - had built the translator system, which ringed Pittsburgh

44:59 - and they found that it didn't work

45:01 - much better than the off the air signal that they provided

45:05 - and gave them all kinds of problems and extra costs.

45:09 - So they encouraged us to build that system in Union Town

45:12 - because then you could

45:14 - take their translator off the air,

45:16 - but they wouldn't take the translator off the air, too.

45:19 - We were able to supply the service.

45:21 - Remember that, John? I sure do.

45:22 - And I think they were encouraging the other operators

45:26 - to get rid of the translators in the same way.

45:30 - So that probably helped you and Jim Palmer out there

45:33 - and some of the franchises around Pittsburgh.

45:37 - In addition to that, one of the unique things

45:40 - about the Union Town

45:42 - system was it was built with the Star Line,

45:44 - one that Jerald had

45:45 - come out with and then smiling down in there

45:49 - because he remembers, I think, Star Line one,

45:52 - we put the the amplifiers on the bench

45:54 - and did somewhere around six or eight modifications

45:58 - to the amplifier before we even put it out in the housing.

46:02 - And I can recall John and I had a terrible problem

46:07 - with the,

46:09 - the sl the line extender.

46:13 - We put them up in the summertime

46:15 - and as soon as it started to get cold in the winter.

46:17 - Well I the trains, the line extenders all stopped working.

46:22 - They had a big capacitor and it didn't work right.

46:25 - And so most of the town blotted out where the extenders were.

46:29 - And it was a little bit

46:30 - of a frantic situation to try to figure out

46:33 - how to put a capacitor on the rows line extenders

46:36 - because nothing would fit in the case.

46:38 - So we put spaghetti tubing on the leads.

46:42 - It went into the amplifier and stuck it outside.

46:45 - And I imagine

46:45 - we radiated a little bit of the signal

46:47 - that that was before the FCC started to even

46:50 - look at radiation.

46:51 - But we did a little bit of non

46:55 - ionic radiation there. But

46:59 - talking about

47:00 - the business of the television stations

47:03 - or the networks not cooperating with the cable systems,

47:08 - CBS was the main group that that CBS network

47:13 - that really didn't like cable operators.

47:15 - If you would request permission

47:17 - to carry a CBS signal, the television station

47:20 - that carried the CBS network was required by CBS.

47:25 - I suppose to write and say We are not authorized

47:29 - to allow you to use our signals.

47:32 - But strangely enough, in Scranton,

47:34 - the CBS outlet WDSU

47:38 - was very interested in getting on all the cable systems,

47:41 - and we did a lot of work with them, putting up

47:45 - equipment at the various cable systems

47:48 - so that we could

47:48 - translate their signal and actually get it so it would

47:51 - run on the cable system.

47:53 - So it was not all of the networks were against cable

47:58 - and certainly not all the television stations

48:01 - were against cable.

48:03 - Most of them were very appreciative

48:06 - in the UHF regions of Pennsylvania

48:09 - to get the extra coverage that the cable system provided.

48:14 - May I say that also

48:17 - the reference to WDSU,

48:19 - which reminds me

48:20 - that WDSU wanted to get on our system and I kept said that

48:24 - there is the problem we had.

48:25 - We had limited capacity.

48:28 - They said, you've got to make it attractive enough

48:31 - for us to make some changes because we had one or two

48:34 - New York channels on there.

48:36 - As a result, they said, Well, what do we do?

48:39 - Say, Well, I suggest you go on later at night.

48:43 - They had a daytime game and up until about 11, 11,

48:48 - 12:00 at night, they'd go off, make it attractive enough.

48:52 - Yeah.

48:53 - I'm not one to take credit for it, but I suggested to them

48:57 - to do this and run all night if necessary.

49:02 - And they did.

49:03 - And that was their success.

49:05 - They all would call me, say, Bob, that was a good idea.

49:08 - We're now getting better cooperation

49:10 - because people are late at night when to see television.

49:13 - The other stations don't. And they go off the air.

49:15 - We're on all night.

49:16 - And that WDSU was progressive in that in that respect.

49:21 - Most of the stations signing around 130,

49:25 - they would have late

49:26 - night news around 11, then go into today's show.

49:30 - And when The Daily Show went off the air, why they signed off?

49:35 - Well, I don't like most of the people around this table.

49:38 - I'm not an operator and I've never been an operator.

49:41 - I'm basically an engineer

49:43 - and one of the problems that I remember in the early days

49:46 - and the early days for me were all construction

49:49 - was the fact that most of the communities,

49:52 - many of the power companies, telephone companies, went down

49:55 - through easements

49:56 - and they had a franchise

49:58 - which which permitted them to put cable down the easement.

50:01 - But the people

50:02 - who lived in those homes didn't think the cable operator

50:05 - had a right to go down those easements.

50:07 - And I recall in the early days being held up in construction

50:11 - because somebody said, you can't cross my property line.

50:15 - And I learned later on that the reason why we couldn't

50:18 - pass his property line

50:20 - was because

50:21 - he wanted television, but he didn't want to pay for it.

50:25 - And we had a lot of those.

50:26 - He All right.

50:28 - In addition to the problem on the poles,

50:32 - about the time got in the business is

50:34 - when the FCC took over the jurisdiction of cable TV.

50:38 - You might want to talk about that.

50:39 - Or some of you

50:40 - you remember when the

50:41 - FCC decided to take us over, they had a big battle.

50:44 - I think the head of the

50:45 - committee in the Senate was Orrin Harris.

50:49 - Well,

50:50 - it was a big battle and it lasted for several years.

50:54 - And the FCC at least twice

50:59 - before they

51:03 - decided to undertake

51:05 - jurisdiction, had ruled that they didn't have any.

51:08 - And the thing that got they

51:12 - finally brought the industry under their control

51:16 - was the availability of microwave for KATV.

51:21 - When we got the first microwave grants

51:25 - to permit carrying signals

51:28 - to KATV systems where we thought that this one of their

51:34 - one of the big events and today it still is it still

51:39 - historically was one of the big developments in the industry.

51:43 - But at the same time, it was a development

51:46 - that allowed the industry to begin to encroach

51:49 - into broadcast areas that formerly

51:53 - had a monopoly and the broadcasters

51:57 - had the political strength first and interest to Congress in

52:04 - the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce

52:05 - Committee to conduct hearings

52:07 - on the impact of cable and illegal boosters

52:10 - on the order the development of broadcasting.

52:13 - And the FCC

52:16 - finally succumbed to the pressure

52:20 - of the Congress and decided they would impose

52:25 - regulation on any TV system

52:28 - that used microwave because they figured

52:32 - we can tell the TV system

52:35 - you must give non duplication protection for a period 30 days

52:40 - before 1230 days after the local broadcaster would broadcast.

52:46 - And we'll take we either won't grant the license

52:50 - or we'll take it away from you if we've already got one.

52:53 - And they started out with that

52:55 - and then gradually over the years

52:58 - got to the point where they just said,

53:00 - we're to apply these rules to all cable systems,

53:04 - whether or not they use microwave.

53:06 - That took a period of seven or eight years

53:09 - to get from the first to the last one.

53:12 - But finally they just reached out

53:14 - and grabbed without a scintilla of authority

53:18 - in the Communications Act to regulate the industry.

53:22 - They just

53:24 - took jurisdiction and said, the reason we're doing

53:27 - this is because CAA, TV's systems don't pay copyright fees

53:32 - and therefore they're

53:33 - in unfair competition with local broadcast stations.

53:37 - And we've got to protect the local broadcast stations

53:40 - and you all know that went on for years straight.

53:43 - I'd like to just touch on something.

53:47 - While you were talking about that, it reminded me that

53:52 - almost every fight that the cable industry

53:56 - had on Capitol Hill back in those days seemed to have

54:01 - a large group of people writing to their congressmen.

54:05 - And I seem to recall that

54:07 - I was told one time that most of those letters

54:10 - were coming from retirees, from the telephone industry.

54:14 - And the telephone industry had some way of manipulating

54:19 - their letter writing

54:20 - and in fact assisted them in writing letters

54:23 - to a lot of key congressmen

54:25 - so that the telephone industry got their way a lot of times.

54:28 - Can you address that?

54:30 - Do You recall anything about that?

54:32 - Well, I can address that.

54:33 - I don't want to get too far away from the subject.

54:36 - But the fact of the matter is, by the 1920s, the late 1920s,

54:42 - AT&T owned the major telephone company

54:46 - in every single state in the union,

54:49 - and they controlled only 80% of the telephones

54:53 - and controlled almost 100% of them

54:56 - through their control over long distance service and so on. And

55:04 - as a result of this,

55:10 - they they simply excuse

55:12 - me, apologized for that.

55:22 - And as a result,

55:25 - they were able to completely dominate the industry.

55:31 - In addition

55:33 - to that problem excuse me,

55:36 - we had the problem of the copyright suit

55:40 - where we couldn't get bonds and we couldn't get insurance

55:45 - because we were facing a multimillion dollar

55:49 - and we were near

55:51 - who was a lawyer major who was a lawyer that they had

55:54 - represented all the copyright owners.

55:57 - Yeah. Louie, Louie, Nisar.

55:59 - And it would start with it in.

56:01 - And when we went to get bonds, we couldn't get bonds

56:05 - unless you went to Lloyd's of London

56:07 - because we were facing all these claims.

56:10 - And you played a role there in that lawsuit.

56:14 - Were we?

56:14 - We won that suit before the Supreme Court.

56:18 - And that enabled us to get

56:20 - get rid of the liabilities of the

56:22 - of the copyright potential liabilities of the copyrights.

56:26 - Well, I was involved in that litigation,

56:28 - and I didn't complete my answer to George's question.

56:33 - I had a senior moment while I was coughing

56:36 - and forgot what it was I was trying to say, but the

56:40 - the control their ability to

56:45 - dominate through mailings

56:47 - resulted from the fact that in every community

56:51 - around the country, the local telephone manager

56:55 - attended every meeting of the local chamber of Commerce

56:59 - and every meeting of the local municipalities,

57:03 - and kept track of everything that was going on.

57:06 - And they also were

57:08 - required to be acquainted with the local congressmen,

57:12 - the local representative, and the local state officials.

57:15 - This was a system requirement

57:18 - within the entire bill organization.

57:21 - And so the result was that whenever 1880 in New York

57:25 - says, right, they wrote, and they know who to write to,

57:29 - they wrote to the people who passed the legislation.

57:34 - Correct.

57:34 - Change gears a little bit here

57:36 - and ask each of you to take a turn in.

57:39 - Looking back to the day

57:41 - you flipped the switch on your first cable system

57:43 - and the first pictures went to people's houses.

57:46 - What the atmosphere was like in town, what you heard from

57:49 - people in town,

57:51 - how the newspaper reported it, what the customers said.

57:54 - John, can you start?

57:56 - Well, I think that,

57:58 - you know,

58:00 - it's hard to to find the words

58:04 - that when you brought

58:09 - that signal down to that first home

58:12 - and you saw that picture

58:14 - light up, the excitement

58:20 - that the customer had to see, this was a miracle.

58:25 - They were sitting in their living room

58:27 - and receiving a picture in this rural, rural community

58:31 - of of bought and

58:38 - my reflection is that

58:41 - along with that was the excitement

58:44 - and the satisfaction that it gave me

58:48 - to be part of that, to bring that

58:52 - picture to somebody's home and to provide a service

58:57 - that would in future years

59:00 - bring so much enjoyment and satisfaction so

59:06 - there was a great feeling of excitement and

59:11 - the coverage.

59:11 - It was covered in the local newspaper.

59:14 - It was front page news

59:17 - photographer was there interviewing everybody.

59:20 - And there was a sense of really

59:23 - something important happening in this little.

59:26 - But on the other hand, I think also that sometimes we

59:28 - you know, we've been focusing a lot on

59:31 - before I let everybody talk,

59:33 - but we've been focusing a lot on all of our problems.

59:36 - And there were a lot of problems.

59:38 - But I just wanted to

59:41 - comment that,

59:43 - you know, all of us had to improvise

59:47 - and all of us had to come up with different ways

59:50 - to keep this system going and alive.

59:53 - And I was thinking about my I just repeated the story,

59:57 - 265 but I not want to hear a story from Joe and George about this.

01:00 - 04.834 And then I want to hear a story from Jim, because I think that

01:00 - 07.103 it was a fun time, too.

01:00 - 10.039 Yeah, we lost a lot of sleep and yeah, we

01:00 - 13.843 we had a lot of concerns and anxieties.

01:00 - 16.145 Let me tell you, I wouldn't change it for anything.

01:00 - 20.850 I was so fortunate to be out there and be part of all this.

01:00 - 22.518 So and I'm thinking about

01:00 - 25.154 when we build our second cable system in my home town

01:00 - 29.325 in 1954 and my brother and I, we had two Jerald

01:00 - 33.162 engineers and we went up and

01:00 - 35.264 we were offering

01:00 - 38.835 five channels and that was a state of the art.

01:00 - 40.236 The picture looked good.

01:00 - 42.238 And at the bottom of the hill,

01:00 - 44.607 my parents lived and we checked it out.

01:00 - 46.576 Picture looked great

01:00 - 49.512 and we were ready to go and we were going to give it

01:00 - 50.880 to the customers.

01:00 - 53.549 That night I got a call from my

01:00 - 54.984 and I said, What's the matter?

01:00 - 57.654 He said, Well, the pictures just gone all this wrong.

01:00 - 00.390 He says, I don't know what the matter is.

01:01 - 01.924 And we just

01:01 - 05.928 every night Gus would call me up and say, The picture's bad,

01:01 - 07.563 daytime looks good.

01:01 - 10.700 And we called up the Jerrold engineers, Frank Martin.

01:01 - 12.602 I don't know if money was part of it.

01:01 - 13.703 We all checked it out.

01:01 - 15.505 We did everything possible.

01:01 - 18.975 After about 15 days, I got a call from my brother

01:01 - 20.243 and my brother said, Well,

01:01 - 23.613 he says, John, he says, Got it all figured out.

01:01 - 26.282 I said, Well, you do it pictures good.

01:01 - 28.651 He says, Great. He says, Sort of. What happened?

01:01 - 31.654 He says, Well, Mom used to turn on the front porch

01:01 - 34.791 light at 7:00 every night and is shorted out.

01:01 - 37.360 Everything so simple that there

01:01 - 41.731 were no.

01:01 - 43.266 I'd like to hear

01:01 - 46.769 a story about Joe, if I can.

01:01 - 49.305 And the shotgun.

01:01 - 50.506 Yeah.

01:01 - 52.608 Talk about problems, you know.

01:01 - 56.012 And like he said, Hazelwood was, it was a Yankee town

01:01 - 01.617 and we put up a stack of one pianos actually 64 antennas.

01:02 - 04.320 And sure enough, in the springtime,

01:02 - 07.957 the ballgames were just starting their practice

01:02 - 08.991 and this and that.

01:02 - 11.561 And if people are watching a games, everybody's happy.

01:02 - 14.564 And this time we we're at a different

01:02 - 17.400 antenna site than the original and pictures are pretty good.

01:02 - 20.470 So come spring came we get a good rainstorm

01:02 - 21.537 and sure enough,

01:02 - 24.941 the darn things are iced up that the tower I stepped up

01:02 - 27.210 the wires and everything, you know, me

01:02 - 27.677 and Johnny

01:02 - 29.679 getting are sitting up there and how in the world

01:02 - 32.181 are we going to get these pictures back?

01:02 - 36.018 So we got to brainstorm that and nobody wanted to claim it.

01:02 - 38.621 They were up by 50, 60 feet.

01:02 - 41.491 So we would try maybe it would a shotgun.

01:02 - 44.026 We can clean up the ice off.

01:02 - 47.163 And Sylvia disagreed with the truth.

01:02 - 51.200 So we get a number six shot, shoot at it a couple of time.

01:02 - 54.003 Nothing, and the ice just stayed there.

01:02 - 55.805 I said, Well, let's try a number of four shot.

01:02 - 57.640 Maybe that'll do it.

01:02 - 00.710 We shot the number four and stay off

01:03 - 02.712 the ice didn't come down.

01:03 - 04.480 So I'm trying.

01:03 - 07.383 Well, maybe maybe a number two will definitely do it.

01:03 - 09.418 We're shooting

01:03 - 12.054 half a box of shells and that they never did

01:03 - 16.025 ice up and oh and so and then when you when you ice up,

01:03 - 18.828 you retain the picture, but you lose the sound.

01:03 - 21.631 It j change the characteristic and you lose the sound.

01:03 - 24.534 So then we've got the bright idea.

01:03 - 26.435 Let's try some buckshot.

01:03 - 27.703 That's just that. Don't do it.

01:03 - 28.070 Nothing.

01:03 - 31.574 Well, so the first round, me and Charlie Roach got together.

01:03 - 34.811 POW! We blew the antennas away.

01:03 - 37.146 No, I don't have no sound.

01:03 - 40.016 They lost the picture to

01:03 - 41.384 address that.

01:03 - 45.922 As matter of fact, the question did arise.

01:03 - 49.292 I had the first public display

01:03 - 52.695 was in in town

01:03 - 54.597 in a store room.

01:03 - 57.900 They set up a television set and it made an announcement,

01:03 - 00.236 if you want to see television, go downtown.

01:04 - 04.607 And I just located some photographs.

01:04 - 08.110 As a matter of fact, I'm doing research

01:04 - 11.714 for the history of Carbon County. I

01:04 - 15.785 they call on me because of my age.

01:04 - 17.987 Bob. Bob TARLOV know all about this.

01:04 - 22.592 So they go back to Bob Charlton and I got involved

01:04 - 25.728 a year and a half ago with the historical group

01:04 - 27.463 from Carbon County.

01:04 - 32.168 They have had four editions starting ten years ago

01:04 - 34.370 of the county and they

01:04 - 37.106 gradually moved up and now they're in our section

01:04 - 40.076 and they're doing some work and they saw me about a year

01:04 - 42.378 and a half ago and they wrote something.

01:04 - 45.214 We have something in there about you.

01:04 - 47.617 And as we're discussing it, they started discussing

01:04 - 49.952 some other things about the department store

01:04 - 53.656 in town and a photograph of me was in this in this recently

01:04 - 56.692 and they said, there's a two Charlton's in there.

01:04 - 01.731 And no, I didn't mean to inject this, but but it's interesting.

01:05 - 05.001 And they said, Are you any relation?

01:05 - 06.836 And I said, If it's a photograph,

01:05 - 11.374 I knew it's a department store and I'm on.

01:05 - 12.575 There you are.

01:05 - 16.245 No. Is it 19 and 1928?

01:05 - 17.013 I should.

01:05 - 18.748 I was in high school and work there

01:05 - 20.950 and my father's on the bottom there.

01:05 - 23.619 He was the radio repairman and I helped him.

01:05 - 29.191 I used to put antennas up in 1928 where four bright stars and

01:05 - 31.494 so that

01:05 - 34.797 that's how I got involved trying to find some photos I've got

01:05 - 38.234 for the last seven years.

01:05 - 42.571 I had a warehouse actually is an own apartment I'm

01:05 - 46.142 paying rent on with all this all the history that I promised

01:05 - 50.313 everybody I would get together one day, I haven't got to it.

01:05 - 51.847 I'm starting to dig through.

01:05 - 53.916 I found this one photograph.

01:05 - 58.854 There's a couple there of a photograph of taken inside

01:05 - 02.491 the store room of the crowd outside watching television.

01:06 - 05.227 So I have that.

01:06 - 08.164 And plus the fact that

01:06 - 11.067 it generated

01:06 - 14.270 national and international interest

01:06 - 17.506 in late 19

01:06 - 22.979 late in 1950, about 8050.

01:06 - 28.651 And in early 1951, some radio fellows here

01:06 - 32.822 might remember radio news, the radio news magazine.

01:06 - 35.992 They came through Philco.

01:06 - 38.461 And there's a lot of misinformation in there

01:06 - 41.063 because they said Philco developed as it was Gerald,

01:06 - 44.200 but it was a Philco public relations fellow.

01:06 - 48.170 15 pages come down and took photographs

01:06 - 51.107 through the whole thing that generated it information

01:06 - 54.477 that did because it radio news went around the world.

01:06 - 56.012 It's a monthly magazine

01:06 - 58.681 whose magazine I forget who

01:06 - 01.650 publish it, but it your radio knows George

01:07 - 05.021 we're talking about this

01:07 - 07.957 well.

01:07 - 09.992 Oh, yes, this is this is it.

01:07 - 12.094 This is it.

01:07 - 13.095 What a coincidence.

01:07 - 16.032 But anyway, they

01:07 - 18.300 they took there's actually photographs

01:07 - 21.137 and then then the Cable

01:07 - 24.340 Society published the whole thing

01:07 - 26.675 back some years ago.

01:07 - 29.145 And I don't I can't find any copies

01:07 - 31.914 in that magazine, but it's in the Cable

01:07 - 36.185 Society and I've got to call Denver sometime.

01:07 - 37.653 They must have had that.

01:07 - 41.857 Well, they have it in in Exeter, I'm sure to duplicate that.

01:07 - 43.692 But that magazine generated

01:07 - 46.495 tremendous interest because it showed

01:07 - 49.231 how I built the amplifiers, how I built

01:07 - 52.435 the fabricated, the cases for power.

01:07 - 54.003 It's a complete description.

01:07 - 56.539 And I quote how to build a cable system

01:07 - 59.809 so that that all generated tremendous interest.

01:07 - 02.411 That was in early 1950.

01:08 - 03.813 The site.

01:08 - 05.881 Do you remember when cable came to town? Yeah.

01:08 - 07.917 Newsweek and me came.

01:08 - 10.019 And this was in

01:08 - 13.022 this wasn't Newsweek, but this is yeah, but this is one.

01:08 - 17.827 But it was radio news, a

01:08 - 21.030 magazine that you'd pick up at a movie stand.

01:08 - 23.365 But the television or the radio man at the time.

01:08 - 27.403 Well, got the radio news and you possibly remember it Joe.

01:08 - 29.872 Yeah, and that big thick volume

01:08 - 33.642 and that generated that interest all over the country.

01:08 - 37.613 And I got lots of telephone calls, letters

01:08 - 39.048 and everything else as about

01:08 - 41.317 send me this information, that information.

01:08 - 43.953 But that, that, that, that answers that.

01:08 - 47.756 Well, Al Warren was writing a good bit about his TV

01:08 - 48.691 early days.

01:08 - 52.862 Yeah, well, in the late fifties and and late 1950

01:08 - 54.630 because I was reading about it. Yeah.

01:08 - 56.832 And he kept on writing because were news.

01:08 - 58.000 Yeah I know.

01:08 - 58.234 Yeah.

01:08 - 03.639 Kept on writing in through 1951 and then stopped writing about

01:09 - 05.407 you started writing about the industry.

01:09 - 05.941 Yeah. Yeah.

01:09 - 08.711 I talked with Al about this, but you were a real news maker

01:09 - 10.746 and sold a lot of copy for him there.

01:09 - 11.747 Jim, can. Can you?

01:09 - 14.316 I only had Jim to tell about cable coming to Meadville.

01:09 - 21.090 Yeah I'd like to step back with what John said.

01:09 - 22.057 We are, we are,

01:09 - 23.792 we are to talk a little bit about how it was

01:09 - 25.027 to really get things started,

01:09 - 28.230 because everybody experiences the same problem.

01:09 - 31.934 And you're were talking about this by shooting the ice.

01:09 - 37.239 I did the same thing in Channel two we had built in L.A.

01:09 - 39.575 member Jack Beavers.

01:09 - 42.912 He built all the antennas from Jerrold

01:09 - 43.579 Beaver view.

01:09 - 47.016 Yeah, well, anyway, he designed the Channel two antenna for us.

01:09 - 49.685 We had problems with code channel.

01:09 - 53.022 And I'd like to also explain what cocaine was a little bit.

01:09 - 55.791 It's two channels hitting, an antenna at the same time.

01:09 - 58.694 And we were trying to bring in channel to Pittsburgh,

01:09 - 00.930 which was 90 miles away.

01:10 - 03.132 The channel to Buffalo was 90 miles away.

01:10 - 06.302 So we had to build that antenna with a big screen on it.

01:10 - 08.504 It was just a dipole,

01:10 - 11.907 the single dipole, but we put two of stack, two of them,

01:10 - 16.712 then we'd both chicken screen in the back to shield it,

01:10 - 19.582 and that screen got full of ice, just coated with ice.

01:10 - 22.885 And I didn't I didn't know what kind of shot,

01:10 - 24.353 but I wanted a small shot

01:10 - 26.455 so I didn't want to blow the antenna away.

01:10 - 28.524 And that's what happened.

01:10 - 29.792 We I jumped in the shotgun

01:10 - 32.394 and start shooting the ice off of the back of the antennas

01:10 - 34.530 on the screen and all of a sudden

01:10 - 37.399 the picture came in and good and that worked.

01:10 - 38.934 But that's why I say

01:10 - 42.171 that we all had pretty much the same kind of a problem

01:10 - 45.407 and we would nothing of it to pick the phone up.

01:10 - 47.676 And I'd call Joe, right, or John,

01:10 - 50.279 I'd have this problem and oh sure, we did that

01:10 - 53.849 and worked it out and that's

01:10 - 57.119 what I think was very unique about the cable industry.

01:10 - 00.389 And the people in it was that they we were all friends.

01:11 - 02.925 We all knew each other personally.

01:11 - 05.294 I didn't hesitate to ever call

01:11 - 08.864 and none of us would not take the call except John some

01:11 - 10.499 when he was a bill collector.

01:11 - 13.769 Well John had to serve up the

01:11 - 17.906 hot dogs in between the cold.

01:11 - 20.409 And not only that, but I think I had the reputation

01:11 - 22.811 for not paying my bills in a timely fashion.

01:11 - 25.547 Oh, you wouldn't do something like that

01:11 - 28.651 if we all had problems paying our bills.

01:11 - 29.551 Well, that's

01:11 - 30.552 you know, I'd like to hear

01:11 - 34.490 Jim's story about it all last year, Christmas and Ha,

01:11 - 36.625 because I think it's reflective of how hard

01:11 - 38.961 we work to try to keep the systems going

01:11 - 41.530 but provide service by the coffee. Yeah.

01:11 - 44.833 Give him this story where we were.

01:11 - 45.801 This was

01:11 - 48.904 C I'd like to go back and start and say how we went

01:11 - 50.372 from Channel five, Channel 12.

01:11 - 55.577 But anyway, we were going to try this 20 channel system

01:11 - 58.814 and it was aluminum all in cable.

01:11 - 01.884 And in the fifties

01:12 - 04.219 here again experimenting with everything.

01:12 - 05.421 We did

01:12 - 09.291 it one Christmas Eve, the filling pool part,

01:12 - 12.428 and we lost a lot of pictures.

01:12 - 15.631 And Christmas Day we had to go out and work.

01:12 - 17.499 We had all the crews out working,

01:12 - 22.171 trying to get this stuff put back together and in Meadville,

01:12 - 24.640 trying to find a cup of coffee on Christmas Day.

01:12 - 25.874 And me, it was pretty tough

01:12 - 28.444 and I didn't have time to go make it, but I,

01:12 - 32.414 I thought I'll get them a sandwich and keep them going.

01:12 - 36.852 But instead of coffee, I had got into making some wine

01:12 - 40.155 at one time and my wine

01:12 - 43.325 looked like black and

01:12 - 47.763 so I took the thermos bottle with wine and I took it out

01:12 - 51.033 and start pouring wine and paper cups

01:12 - 54.002 and everybody would grab the cup and start to think

01:12 - 55.070 it was a hot cup of coffee.

01:12 - 57.239 And since it was wine, they downed it.

01:12 - 59.274 It helped.

01:12 - 00.676 We got the problems corrected.

01:13 - 03.312 It was pretty funny because.

01:13 - 05.714 Those were those weren't unusual things.

01:13 - 07.750 We did a lot of things like that.

01:13 - 11.420 You know, you talk about the first picture is when we

01:13 - 15.257 first put the sediment Haslem in

01:13 - 18.861 right down out the heights actually a second amplifier

01:13 - 21.997 you know we turned around the pictures were good

01:13 - 24.299 and everybody's happy and this and that.

01:13 - 28.170 All of a sudden the mayor of the town calls us up and council

01:13 - 31.407 said, What are you people doing to the television on nights?

01:13 - 34.676 And they said I don't know what's wrong, he said.

01:13 - 35.744 And he gave us numbers.

01:13 - 36.378 He said

01:13 - 40.215 we ruined all the reception on on the on the antenna services.

01:13 - 43.352 And sure enough, I go up the heights there.

01:13 - 45.721 And they weren't getting really good reception,

01:13 - 47.689 but they were getting some reception.

01:13 - 51.693 And here the cable was leaking the line between amplifier

01:13 - 54.596 and the radio box. It was leaking. So

01:13 - 58.534 Gerald sends up an engineer and he's there.

01:13 - 00.602 Boy, all week he's writing.

01:14 - 03.405 Oh, boy, this guy knows this stuff he's going to fix.

01:14 - 05.441 This comes Friday.

01:14 - 06.141 He said, yep,

01:14 - 08.677 you got radiation, gets in his car and drives away.

01:14 - 11.480 Talking about that problem.

01:14 - 14.550 Joe That was one of the reasons the FCC got hot

01:14 - 15.984 under the collar.

01:14 - 17.486 One of the perfect examples

01:14 - 19.788 of that occurred in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,

01:14 - 23.959 when a US Air well, it was an US air in those days.

01:14 - 25.594 It was Allegheny Airlines.

01:14 - 28.063 A flight coming into Harrisburg Airport

01:14 - 31.133 lost total communication with the ground.

01:14 - 34.102 And when they finally solved this particular problem,

01:14 - 37.172 it was because the the AGC channel

01:14 - 39.975 on the Jerrold amplifiers in Harrisburg leaked

01:14 - 43.011 and blocked out the ability of the

01:14 - 46.415 the airplane to receive signals from the tower.

01:14 - 51.520 And I spent a full week in Harrisburg that year

01:14 - 56.258 repairing every amplifier by moving the AGC

01:14 - 00.529 frequency to a frequency which would not interfere

01:15 - 02.097 with the Harrisburg Airport.

01:15 - 06.235 And the way we'd fix it, though, is Tony

01:15 - 09.204 Katonah came up and what we did,

01:15 - 12.341 we disconnected, started disconnecting cables.

01:15 - 14.810 We had a guy in a house there looking at the pictures

01:15 - 17.179 that you put a big black bar

01:15 - 19.982 or about three quarters across the pictures.

01:15 - 24.319 A cable is and here we found was a cable like imagine between

01:15 - 29.124 Eddie Obus and the amplifier and what Tony did he

01:15 - 33.028 we took a piece of telephone line, the lead line.

01:15 - 37.299 We pulled the copper wires out and we put the RG 59 in there

01:15 - 40.369 and put the connectors on and stopped it.

01:15 - 43.539 But this is the cooperation we had with Jerrold

01:15 - 44.907 and different operators

01:15 - 47.342 and so forth by the radiation storage.

01:15 - 48.343 It started right now

01:15 - 50.879 when we were building this.

01:15 - 53.649 Remember the galvanized boxes.

01:15 - 54.082 Yeah.

01:15 - 55.851 That put the amplifiers in the boxes.

01:15 - 58.220 Put the boxes on the floor.

01:15 - 59.354 We were building the system.

01:15 - 01.456 The southern part in the lower part of Meadville.

01:16 - 05.160 And as usual, when you start putting cable up in

01:16 - 08.397 boxes on the board, people think you're interfering

01:16 - 11.066 with the signal from their antennas.

01:16 - 14.403 So we had the boxes up

01:16 - 17.472 and the cable in

01:16 - 20.943 and we got a report that the FCC was going down

01:16 - 23.178 to do a radiation check from Buffalo,

01:16 - 24.780 and they brought these

01:16 - 28.584 big trucks down with millions of dollars of equipment,

01:16 - 31.320 and they started doing the radiation checks

01:16 - 33.322 around this area.

01:16 - 35.490 And they came back zero radiation.

01:16 - 38.393 And what they didn't know is, they didn't go

01:16 - 39.227 and look in the boxes.

01:16 - 43.231 They were empty.

01:16 - 44.733 We got a very excellent report.

01:16 - 47.069 You were

01:16 - 50.372 of engineers that couldn't understand

01:16 - 54.242 that they never went up the pole to open the box to look at it.

01:16 - 56.011 They knew there was radiation there,

01:16 - 58.113 but you just couldn't find

01:16 - 02.884 those are those were all a lot of

01:17 - 04.052 a lot of interesting problems.

01:17 - 05.520 And there were times

01:17 - 08.790 when when the people from Gerald would come and we'd end up

01:17 - 10.626 to the antenna site to work out a problem.

01:17 - 13.095 And next thing you know, it's breakfast time.

01:17 - 14.162 You just work all night.

01:17 - 16.898 You never stop until the problem was corrected.

01:17 - 20.736 And and I think that was kind of unique with the people

01:17 - 22.004 in our industry back then.

01:17 - 25.774 I think it was just a love the John talks about that

01:17 - 30.145 you wanted to see the results of trying to make that picture

01:17 - 34.349 come down that line and and I felt the same way

01:17 - 38.353 I remember the first time I saw a picture of the satellite

01:17 - 40.889 and what a thrill that was.

01:17 - 43.992 And those are the kind of things that never want

01:17 - 44.660 to make you quit.

01:17 - 45.727 You can't you're afraid

01:17 - 48.997 you're going to miss something if you quit and it's

01:17 - 52.134 it's a lot more sophisticated now, I think.

01:17 - 53.535 I think when we

01:17 - 55.737 when we first started,

01:17 - 58.573 almost everything that we did was experimental.

01:17 - 01.176 You got equipment from the manufacturer.

01:18 - 04.546 You knew what it was supposed to do, but rarely did it do it.

01:18 - 08.216 I think today you pretty much know you

01:18 - 09.451 whatever you get, it's going to work.

01:18 - 13.622 And I think those experimental things were very good to us.

01:18 - 16.925 What kind of a workweek did you work

01:18 - 18.660 around the clock and

01:18 - 23.131 there was no if the TV's off, I mean, you don't go home

01:18 - 24.933 because that telephone will drive you nuts,

01:18 - 26.435 whether it's Saturday, Sunday,

01:18 - 28.470 midnight, Christmas Easter or whatever.

01:18 - 31.239 Those pictures mean life and death and murder of them.

01:18 - 33.275 They have them. No pictures.

01:18 - 34.576 You have big trouble

01:18 - 36.845 and you just kept working until you got pictures of that

01:18 - 39.281 phone would drive it completely out of your mind.

01:18 - 42.384 It never stopped ringing and customers would get irate.

01:18 - 43.351 They're missing their news.

01:18 - 45.420 They're missing their favorite program.

01:18 - 46.955 My kid wants to watch Archie.

01:18 - 49.958 Last year, I made that off on my afternoon program.

01:18 - 50.492 Don't.

01:18 - 54.663 Oh, well, Irene, Joe would come in the door

01:18 - 58.100 and say, I'll fix this and you'd hand him another batch.

01:18 - 58.633 Is that the way

01:18 - 03.138 that similarity customers get like that right away?

01:19 - 04.372 Or as soon as they had cable,

01:19 - 06.108 they immediately got hooked on it and

01:19 - 08.110 oh yeah, man, if it was absolutely.

01:19 - 10.512 Oh, yeah, yeah. They love cable.

01:19 - 11.980 They still do.

01:19 - 13.448 I don't know what you do with that cable.

01:19 - 16.852 That's that's again and again as engineer

01:19 - 20.288 rather than an operator, I didn't have to worry about PR.

01:19 - 23.358 So in my particular community,

01:19 - 26.461 the first system I built, everybody called me Mr.

01:19 - 27.662 Television,

01:19 - 31.800 and I would go from the office to the top of the mountain.

01:19 - 34.536 For some reason I get stopped half the way up

01:19 - 35.537 and somebody would jump out

01:19 - 36.505 and say, Hey,

01:19 - 40.442 the cable went off last night at 8:00 and I waited until 2:00

01:19 - 42.711 in the morning, still didn't come back on again.

01:19 - 44.179 What are you going to do about it?

01:19 - 46.281 I suggested to them that maybe they ought

01:19 - 48.283 to write a letter to the FCC.

01:19 - 49.785 And if they didn't want to do that,

01:19 - 54.322 why don't you go get your television from somebody else?

01:19 - 55.023 You're off.

01:19 - 58.026 You know, I'm not the system operator.

01:19 - 59.661 I'm the engineer.

01:19 - 01.963 Between cable television that day

01:20 - 03.331 and the first day

01:20 - 06.268 that Bob turned it on, there's just more channels,

01:20 - 08.370 there's fewer interruptions,

01:20 - 10.105 and there's better picture quality.

01:20 - 12.207 It's just an evolutionary problem.

01:20 - 14.776 How many channels did you have when first turned it on?

01:20 - 17.012 One, three.

01:20 - 18.213 We had three.

01:20 - 21.383 Yeah, I didn't have that luxury system.

01:20 - 24.019 Do you want me to do my spiel on it now?

01:20 - 24.452 I mean.

01:20 - 27.422 Yeah, well, bounce to this in one channel.

01:20 - 29.024 Yeah, actually,

01:20 - 32.394 I've got to go back a little bit beyond that because I cheated

01:20 - 35.397 a little bit on the industry.

01:20 - 38.300 I actually was a

01:20 - 41.236 ham radio operator, amateur radio operator

01:20 - 45.307 to most people and operated a to DVR.

01:20 - 49.144 I lived up in the Finger Lakes region in New York State, worked

01:20 - 53.615 for an outfit called Sylvania Electric Products Corporation,

01:20 - 57.886 and we built picture tubes there for the television set. And

01:20 - 03.358 as a sideline, I built mini TVs systems.

01:21 - 05.994 I didn't know that's what they were at the time, but

01:21 - 09.965 the dealers in town in Geneva, Waterloo,

01:21 - 14.803 Seneca Falls, the whole area, we were about 35,

01:21 - 18.273 40 miles away from Syracuse, which was our main

01:21 - 20.108 television area.

01:21 - 23.278 You get some signals from Rochester, but they very good.

01:21 - 27.482 And when they would sell a television set, the deal

01:21 - 30.852 was, if I get pictures, I'll buy the set.

01:21 - 33.188 If I don't get pictures, take it back.

01:21 - 36.057 So whenever they put their regular antennas up

01:21 - 38.793 and didn't get pictures, I cut a deal with them.

01:21 - 40.695 I'll provide the pictures.

01:21 - 43.331 So we took what we call were the tough nuts.

01:21 - 47.636 I started that in early 1949, but I don't claim to be

01:21 - 51.973 the first in cable television because it wasn't that

01:21 - 52.807 but it was

01:21 - 56.645 it was a mini cable television system geared to that one set.

01:21 - 00.115 We either use high antennas

01:22 - 03.652 or antennas that were not located on the property.

01:22 - 07.822 And of course, being a ham operator was very used to

01:22 - 09.424 the balanced transmission line.

01:22 - 11.993 That's what they call railroad tracks

01:22 - 15.664 when the cable system uses it.

01:22 - 19.067 And in fact, you don't use railroad tracks anymore.

01:22 - 22.370 But West Virginia was paved with railroad tracks

01:22 - 24.272 for a lot of years because that's the only way

01:22 - 26.508 they could get signal around the Doris Homes.

01:22 - 31.046 But we used railroad tracks.

01:22 - 33.548 We did everything.

01:22 - 35.116 You better explain what that means.

01:22 - 36.518 And I think a real railroad tracks.

01:22 - 40.121 Yeah, well, it was open wire transmission line, it

01:22 - 43.692 balanced transmission line as compared with coaxial cable,

01:22 - 46.127 which is an unbalanced transmission line,

01:22 - 48.163 but was spacers that made it

01:22 - 49.531 look like this, what they called it.

01:22 - 51.599 Yeah, the g line. Yeah. No, no.

01:22 - 53.268 This was even different than G line.

01:22 - 56.237 That's a surface way which we haven't touched on here.

01:22 - 58.606 But I showed a good bit of that too.

01:23 - 01.176 But the

01:23 - 04.713 the problems we had back then were if you had a water tank

01:23 - 07.682 or if you had anything that a house was behind

01:23 - 08.249 and they couldn't

01:23 - 10.885 get signal direct from the station,

01:23 - 13.054 you had to devise some way to do it.

01:23 - 15.390 That's what the cable system does today.

01:23 - 18.994 But going from that, where

01:23 - 23.431 we took those stuff, problems that were in the area

01:23 - 26.267 where the television signal actually was located

01:23 - 28.570 and then moving it out further where

01:23 - 30.271 there was no television and

01:23 - 32.807 you had to go up on a mountain or something to find it.

01:23 - 35.944 I finally got interested in

01:23 - 38.813 what our Warren was writing about Bob Tarleton

01:23 - 43.852 and early 1951 started about my first system.

01:23 - 49.557 We turned it on in December of 1951 and we had one

01:23 - 52.227 channel that's the only one I could find in the area.

01:23 - 55.864 And it was difficult to get people

01:23 - 59.801 interested in one channel, especially when the fact

01:23 - 03.171 that I had a signal at the antenna terminals

01:24 - 06.608 of 100 micro volts, which as anyone

01:24 - 08.276 that's been in the

01:24 - 11.312 business for a while and those probably not enough to make

01:24 - 15.750 a good picture, but you could see people moving,

01:24 - 19.921 shall we say, on the television set, and you could hear it.

01:24 - 25.627 And it wasn't a quality signal so that people would really come

01:24 - 27.762 like some of these gentlemen have said.

01:24 - 32.167 And really knock your door down to want to buy it.

01:24 - 36.137 I had to do a little bit of educating to people,

01:24 - 38.406 and it took me about six months before

01:24 - 40.942 I could get the dealers in town to actually stock

01:24 - 42.410 television sets.

01:24 - 45.080 And I did that by stocking them myself and saying,

01:24 - 47.615 If you will sell the television sets, then I will.

01:24 - 48.683 What you charge for.

01:24 - 53.321 One channel of it was $145 installation fee.

01:24 - 56.257 I just checked that in my reference material here

01:24 - 59.194 and we charge $3.50 a month.

01:24 - 03.064 You ask why 350 why a dollar 145?

01:25 - 04.966 Well, I think that's what Bob was

01:25 - 06.601 charging and I just copied him

01:25 - 08.703 about it.

01:25 - 11.272 And I know we charge the same price for three channels.

01:25 - 13.541 They got a better deal from us. Exactly right.

01:25 - 15.844 I would encourage more if I could,

01:25 - 18.113 because it was a little difficult to sell.

01:25 - 19.848 But I asked Bob one time,

01:25 - 24.185 why did you charge $3.50 or was it $3 or $3?

01:25 - 25.420 I started at $3.

01:25 - 27.188 Everybody, everybody else

01:25 - 30.258 that came in would say, I'm going to charge 315.

01:25 - 32.293 And they finally moved up to four and $5.

01:25 - 35.363 We were still and I was stuck with $3.

01:25 - 39.300 I was afraid to raise it anymore because of the customers.

01:25 - 41.436 And finally, my board says, Bob, you're

01:25 - 42.337 starting to get tight in here.

01:25 - 44.839 You better get your rates raised so that that's what price.

01:25 - 47.809 I ask you one time why you started with $3.

01:25 - 50.078 You said that's what the telephone company charge

01:25 - 52.280 I think that was. What did I say?

01:25 - 55.783 I thought you told me that it was kind of an arbitrary

01:25 - 57.252 as a matter of fact

01:25 - 00.421 I must confess, I think I checked in Philadelphia

01:26 - 04.092 what the apartment houses were charging.

01:26 - 05.994 They were charging a rental also.

01:26 - 07.562 And it was somewhere I got about

01:26 - 10.231 one and a half or two or $3 a month for this.

01:26 - 13.601 And and the $3 is what I arbitrarily

01:26 - 17.772 it was an arbitrary figure and the installation was $100,

01:26 - 20.341 but nobody else went 100 on it at all.

01:26 - 21.543 We're going to get more.

01:26 - 22.677 They all did get more.

01:26 - 26.681 But I charge $100 until a couple of years later

01:26 - 30.752 we went and this and that rate, we went to a higher rate

01:26 - 34.923 and only charge a minimal installation fee.

01:26 - 37.492 Yeah, but how many channels did they get for $3?

01:26 - 41.496 Uh, in the beginning was only two channels shown.

01:26 - 45.466 Channel ten in Philadelphia came on three channels, and then

01:26 - 46.801 about a year later,

01:26 - 49.103 when I changed the

01:26 - 52.907 antenna site, a better site on the other side of Summit Hill

01:26 - 56.511 and didn't go through Summit Hill, still with them.

01:26 - 01.282 As a matter of fact, I built a complete telephone line

01:27 - 06.888 and we we then had five channels out of New York.

01:27 - 09.123 Joe, you charged how much for three channels?

01:27 - 11.459 375. And the hook up charge was how much?

01:27 - 13.094 100 a quarter.

01:27 - 15.430 I should I should explain.

01:27 - 19.567 Whenever I was building for the Capital Group in Williamsport,

01:27 - 23.204 Glenn was across the river.

01:27 - 27.308 Across the creek building on what was it, West Williamsport,

01:27 - 30.878 which was South Williamsport, building the system there.

01:27 - 34.782 So we were in in competition, but I was so interested.

01:27 - 36.351 I didn't even know what he was doing.

01:27 - 40.221 I was so busy trying to get this thing in order and

01:27 - 44.692 but later on I knew it because then he came with Jerrold.

01:27 - 48.730 Well, I think that Williamsport probably

01:27 - 54.002 maybe still has the highest pole plant in the country because.

01:27 - 57.171 Every one that wanted to build another system just replaced

01:27 - 59.207 all the poles. They kept going higher and higher.

01:27 - 01.476 I seem to recall there were four cable systems

01:28 - 03.444 operating at one time in Williamsport.

01:28 - 05.446 Yes. Yeah. Amazing.

01:28 - 08.249 When they were one of the things that nobody had mentioned

01:28 - 11.486 with regards, we talked about getting on the poles.

01:28 - 12.620 There's something

01:28 - 15.757 called the National Safety Code which determines

01:28 - 20.161 what you can do on a pole and the positions on a pole

01:28 - 21.863 are specifically spelled out

01:28 - 23.665 with regards to the voltage

01:28 - 25.667 being carried by the power company

01:28 - 27.902 and the telephone companies as well.

01:28 - 28.803 And we would

01:28 - 32.307 always have to get between the telephone company and power

01:28 - 36.277 and you had to be at least 40 inches away from power

01:28 - 39.480 if it was not primary power and a foot above that,

01:28 - 42.717 the telephone company and frequently

01:28 - 44.652 we had to pay to telephone

01:28 - 46.587 or the power company because the telephone company

01:28 - 48.089 would never let us on their pole.

01:28 - 50.491 We would have to pay the power company to change the pole,

01:28 - 53.528 to make room enough for us to get on many areas.

01:28 - 55.697 I want to find out from Jim and John what they charged

01:28 - 59.934 and how much channels they had in the beginning, and $25

01:29 - 03.871 through 50 month for three channels.

01:29 - 07.208 We charge $150 to

01:29 - 10.445 connect and to 95

01:29 - 13.748 to snowy channels.

01:29 - 17.618 And and when I reflect on

01:29 - 21.856 one of the reasons that I remember Milt Sharp came up

01:29 - 26.027 and suggested that we charge $150 because

01:29 - 29.964 there was that question that we weren't going to be around to.

01:29 - 31.232 That's right.

01:29 - 33.601 And had to get our money up front.

01:29 - 37.171 And as I look at how we how

01:29 - 41.809 we went from $150 and we were really

01:29 - 43.177 not getting the customers on.

01:29 - 46.080 So we dropped it down to 135.

01:29 - 50.084 And when we started our second system, we started at 125

01:29 - 51.386 and that didn't do it.

01:29 - 55.890 We went to $75 and we went to $37.50.

01:29 - 56.958 Eventually

01:29 - 00.728 and some years later in the mid sixties, there is still one,

01:30 - 02.563 you know, we were still searching

01:30 - 04.932 for customers and competing with the antennas

01:30 - 06.734 and trying to get people to come on.

01:30 - 10.605 It wasn't as if they were all chasing us to get on.

01:30 - 13.775 We were trying to get customers on and eventually

01:30 - 17.578 we went to Who Can a man for free.

01:30 - 20.681 And on Thanksgiving I'd give a turkey away

01:30 - 23.351 and whatever it took.

01:30 - 26.888 But I think back to the best promotion we ever

01:30 - 31.159 had was when we decided to pay

01:30 - 34.162 a potential customer

01:30 - 37.365 to give them $37.50 for their antenna.

01:30 - 40.868 And once we got that antenna off that roof,

01:30 - 42.937 we were in good shape.

01:30 - 44.572 That was a great promotion.

01:30 - 46.040 I'd like to add something to that too,

01:30 - 49.944 because I notice now, John, that they're buying dishes back.

01:30 - 50.878 That's correct.

01:30 - 52.680 And I had a big discussion, same thing.

01:30 - 54.982 We had tons of antennas.

01:30 - 56.818 I just like to comment on that because,

01:30 - 00.254 you know, times have changed, but we forget I was talking

01:31 - 02.390 to our marketing people not too long ago

01:31 - 05.092 and our competitor was,

01:31 - 07.562 you know, the dish people to direct the satellite people

01:31 - 11.632 and, you know, I said, well, you know,

01:31 - 15.837 what are we doing to to get back some of those customers

01:31 - 16.971 we've lost?

01:31 - 19.440 And, you know, the usual thing, mailers and

01:31 - 22.376 and service and all that sort of thing.

01:31 - 25.713 Well, I, I said, did you ever think about buying

01:31 - 30.184 the dishes back and oh, we can't afford that.

01:31 - 32.720 We wouldn't do that.

01:31 - 36.290 And I said, My God, we couldn't afford $37.50.

01:31 - 41.729 And now we are offering $100, some cases 200 to get them back.

01:31 - 43.498 And it's and it's working.

01:31 - 46.300 What do you do with all those dishes that you might buy, too?

01:31 - 47.134 And that's what I don't like.

01:31 - 49.670 You know what the dishes are, the antennas.

01:31 - 52.473 I don't know the dishes or the dishes.

01:31 - 55.376 You can't resell them because then you lose the customer.

01:31 - 58.246 Well, I remember for the cable museum

01:31 - 00.548 where they are, and I remember the antennas

01:32 - 02.550 we bought back ended up in Florida.

01:32 - 04.685 He sold his antennas again.

01:32 - 05.720 They moved them down there.

01:32 - 08.723 Well, it's we had to reinvent the wheel

01:32 - 13.327 to buy back dishes, apparently, but it's a great sales gimmick.

01:32 - 15.162 I'd like to make one more comment

01:32 - 18.466 about the beginning of the when we started

01:32 - 22.570 with three channels in Meadville.

01:32 - 24.272 Everything we've ever done since

01:32 - 26.541 never created as much excitement

01:32 - 28.109 as we did with the three channels.

01:32 - 29.477 We had

01:32 - 32.313 five, and it was exciting, but After that

01:32 - 38.019 television became old hat, but when they had nothing

01:32 - 41.789 and we brought three channels in, that was big excitement.

01:32 - 45.626 And all the other stuff that happened after that seemed

01:32 - 47.662 to just be accepted.

01:32 - 50.031 And going back to what you said, Irene, about

01:32 - 52.833 when you add channels, you have to increase the prices.

01:32 - 56.837 All of a sudden we get into a every time you pick up

01:32 - 00.074 an article now in the newspaper that the cable overcharges

01:33 - 02.076 but we were charging more than a dollar

01:33 - 04.111 a channel when we first started.

01:33 - 06.447 And now this is a lot less money than that.

01:33 - 08.683 But we have your buying channels now.

01:33 - 10.918 You're it's a whole new picture now.

01:33 - 15.289 But you must remember in the early days, 350 a month,

01:33 - 18.092 you have to remember that in the early days

01:33 - 21.128 there was a threat to the cable systems, that when the freeze

01:33 - 25.299 was lifted by the FCC, there'd be no need to have cable.

01:33 - 29.470 And that fear was very rampant in Jerrold, which was the major

01:33 - 32.406 manufacturer of cable equipment at that particular time.

01:33 - 33.908 And in fact,

01:33 - 36.243 the president of the outfit, Milton Jerrold Sharp,

01:33 - 38.479 decided that he wasn't going

01:33 - 41.148 to be in the cable industry after the freeze came off.

01:33 - 44.452 And so he brought Carmen Harman Kardon,

01:33 - 47.922 uh, who made the hi fi equipment.

01:33 - 53.160 We bought the, uh, a radio manufacturer.

01:33 - 55.196 We bought an equipment manufacturer.

01:33 - 57.465 We made our own zinc die casting.

01:33 - 59.533 We did our own plastic die casting,

01:33 - 01.769 and that lasted for about two years,

01:34 - 03.270 and they all disappeared

01:34 - 05.306 and we went back into the cable industry.

01:34 - 08.309 At what point did you all feel like

01:34 - 09.777 you were out of the woods, knew

01:34 - 11.579 your company was no longer in danger,

01:34 - 12.079 and that cable

01:34 - 15.683 was really going to survive when you could pay your bills?

01:34 - 17.184 What was that?

01:34 - 20.287 Well, it depended.

01:34 - 23.190 Some systems started to pay their bills sooner than others.

01:34 - 27.261 But I can remember some of the systems

01:34 - 32.767 that I had a problem getting the financing for, shall we say.

01:34 - 35.836 And the interest rate was a little bit too high

01:34 - 38.539 and it took a much longer payout for

01:34 - 41.108 and I wondered about even bothering with them.

01:34 - 44.011 But when you're trying to sell two or three channels,

01:34 - 49.450 you've got a difficult time convincing a large portion

01:34 - 53.287 of the eligible subscribers to actually pay you a bill.

01:34 - 58.492 Remember the penetration that the cable industry started

01:34 - 01.629 to enjoy in the seventies of anywhere

01:35 - 04.331 from 60 to 90%

01:35 - 08.769 was not something that you had back in the 1950

01:35 - 12.073 people didn't have the money for the television set?

01:35 - 13.641 No, they didn't have a television set.

01:35 - 15.076 They didn't want cable.

01:35 - 17.678 So you had very low penetrations back

01:35 - 20.815 at that time addressing your question,

01:35 - 24.819 my experience would be that

01:35 - 30.357 that that was only for the first couple of years.

01:35 - 33.461 And as this looked as though it was

01:35 - 36.497 something that could supply a utility purpose

01:35 - 40.668 that disappeared from cable operators,

01:35 - 42.103 the cable operators were enthused.

01:35 - 43.838 They were growing and building.

01:35 - 47.174 So there may have been, uh,

01:35 - 51.378 other financial

01:35 - 54.014 people that felt, well, this is only a hedge.

01:35 - 59.120 But my experience been that, that, that disappeared

01:35 - 02.289 over a period of just a few, the first few years.

01:36 - 04.525 Well, they were going at television.

01:36 - 06.026 There's going to be more cable.

01:36 - 08.129 There's going to be more television signals.

01:36 - 11.432 And may I just make your comment and thank you, George.

01:36 - 13.000 I want to see about this.

01:36 - 16.737 Yeah, I knew I had this someone that Newsweek

01:36 - 19.740 1951 January 15th.

01:36 - 23.511 Newsweek described the sensational new community

01:36 - 25.112 antenna system.

01:36 - 27.948 And it's all about the land trade system

01:36 - 30.251 starts out to huddle

01:36 - 33.053 and B behind them hills around and Panther Valley

01:36 - 35.956 tell a viewing viewing in panther valley

01:36 - 39.260 that was in 1951

01:36 - 44.231 as a result of the publicity in 1950 that you

01:36 - 48.002 mention, George, you mentioned penetration in Lake.

01:36 - 51.806 We built the early fifties, in the sixties, 65,

01:36 - 54.842 66, we had 70% penetration.

01:36 - 57.611 And when you hit 70%, I

01:36 - 00.915 we were a well field.

01:37 - 03.918 She paid the bills but we were able to pay the bills and

01:37 - 09.323 update the system to increase their rates.

01:37 - 11.659 But but penetration was a number.

01:37 - 15.963 Yes. Well, in the sixties and seventies

01:37 - 17.464 it started to climb up.

01:37 - 20.334 But in the fifties, I don't imagine any system

01:37 - 23.037 had over 25, 30% penetration.

01:37 - 26.941 I mean, that was a system that was really going good

01:37 - 29.510 because most people didn't have the television sets

01:37 - 32.847 and then you had to screw up with the color sets.

01:37 - 34.315 Uh, yeah.

01:37 - 38.219 And it was difficult to really convince people

01:37 - 40.788 to lay out the money for a color television set

01:37 - 43.390 and lay out the money you needed for the cable, too.

01:37 - 45.993 So they they found other things to spend their money on.

01:37 - 49.196 Yeah, but every time you wanted upgrade

01:37 - 54.001 and you had to refinance, that wasn't exactly an easy thing.

01:37 - 58.172 Matter of fact, there were only a few banks in the country

01:37 - 01.108 that actually gave out a true

01:38 - 04.211 cable TV financing.

01:38 - 04.879 You know,

01:38 - 07.882 there was one bank in Pittsburgh who had only given out

01:38 - 08.649 one or two loans.

01:38 - 12.419 Pittsburgh National Bank, I think there was one one or two

01:38 - 17.591 banks in Philadelphia holding one or two in New York City.

01:38 - 21.695 There weren't any in Chicago or Atlanta, Dallas, Houston,

01:38 - 24.632 there was one or two in the West Coast, and that was it.

01:38 - 26.967 Economy Finance in Indianapolis.

01:38 - 27.601 That's right.

01:38 - 30.004 A land office business especially.

01:38 - 31.238 You paid for it?

01:38 - 34.074 Yeah. Five over prime.

01:38 - 35.743 Well, yeah. Yeah.

01:38 - 36.010 You know,

01:38 - 41.081 there was a lot of ingenuity in the pricing in those days.

01:38 - 42.283 And one instance

01:38 - 46.420 that I think about frequently, because it was so unusual

01:38 - 48.889 and I believe it was Pottsville, Pennsylvania,

01:38 - 52.626 I think Marty Malarkey told me their story. But

01:38 - 55.529 in that depressed town,

01:38 - 58.532 to get enough money together to buy the television set,

01:38 - 02.303 which was four or $500, and then pay 100 and dollars

01:39 - 05.973 on top of it for a connection, it wasn't an easy thing to do.

01:39 - 09.843 Yeah, people were just begging to get on in some fashion

01:39 - 10.878 or another.

01:39 - 13.914 And Marty went, If it was part Pottsville, Marty

01:39 - 16.517 went to the bank and said, I want to make a deal with you.

01:39 - 19.019 I want you to agree to lend

01:39 - 22.756 to any body who comes in, ask you

01:39 - 26.360 that, wants it to buy a television set and a connection,

01:39 - 29.229 lend them the necessary money to do it.

01:39 - 31.699 And I will guarantee the loan.

01:39 - 34.868 And they started to do that.

01:39 - 38.372 And I don't remember specifically the number of

01:39 - 41.942 people who took advantage of it, but it was a large number.

01:39 - 44.878 And yes, it was malarkey because he told me later,

01:39 - 47.548 he said I didn't lose any money on that deal at all.

01:39 - 51.385 No, these were called recourse loans and

01:39 - 54.455 you could lump your installation price

01:39 - 57.157 and the television set in along with it.

01:39 - 59.159 The bank would discount it.

01:39 - 03.630 And if the customer didn't pay, then you had to repossess.

01:40 - 05.432 It was recourse loan.

01:40 - 08.502 And we started that in early 1952.

01:40 - 11.872 The bank was very much interested in this

01:40 - 16.343 because they had our guarantee, you might say, and yet,

01:40 - 19.780 as you say, it was the only way you could sell the package.

01:40 - 22.316 The people didn't have the money to do it

01:40 - 24.418 and it was no other way for them to do it.

01:40 - 26.820 So we set it up on a time payment point.

01:40 - 30.124 Brian Can I comment on one thing because I don't know

01:40 - 32.393 how much longer we've got, but you know,

01:40 - 34.461 we've touched on a lot of

01:40 - 36.797 interesting

01:40 - 39.400 things that occurred in the early days

01:40 - 43.570 and one is certainly the the issues we had

01:40 - 47.341 with AT&T and I and I think we have a sense of that.

01:40 - 51.211 And the broadcasters and,

01:40 - 53.947 we one thing that we haven't touched upon

01:40 - 57.518 that has always been troubling to me,

01:40 - 00.254 and that is in the sixties

01:41 - 04.992 when there seemed to be a future

01:41 - 09.096 in cable television because a microwave

01:41 - 14.668 and as you went to search for franchises and you look for the

01:41 - 18.772 communities with six feet antennas or ten foot

01:41 - 21.275 antennas, and you look there is a good prospect.

01:41 - 24.645 They began to have a little competition between

01:41 - 26.980 who would get the franchises in the community

01:41 - 31.819 and as a result, the municipalities began to

01:41 - 36.690 dictate what would be in those franchises.

01:41 - 41.728 And one of the most horrendous, most difficult moments,

01:41 - 46.600 and in my opinion, in my lifetime in cable, is

01:41 - 50.003 and I would know offense to the community,

01:41 - 52.639 but they began to regulate our rates.

01:41 - 55.309 And you

01:41 - 58.612 talk about head and hand and humility

01:41 - 01.682 as you would approach a community,

01:42 - 05.552 you know, and you would air channels and rebuild your system

01:42 - 09.156 and you would go in and ask at the time we might be getting

01:42 - 12.292 $6 a month and we'd ask for a quarter more.

01:42 - 14.328 We couldn't get it.

01:42 - 18.098 And that was a terrible position to be in.

01:42 - 22.669 And thank God when the cable began to deregulated

01:42 - 26.673 and pretty much in 82, we started to go down that road

01:42 - 30.244 and we started to have the money centers

01:42 - 34.448 really interested in building the urban areas in suburbia

01:42 - 38.018 and satellite was in play.

01:42 - 39.486 It's a different world.

01:42 - 42.156 And then we got regulated again in 92.

01:42 - 46.093 It was a very dark day and now we have competition

01:42 - 51.698 and I hope I never see today when I have that situation

01:42 - 53.967 where regulators are ready to regulate.

01:42 - 57.271 And every time you do that, you stymie

01:42 - 00.474 an industry in growth, in vision and entrepreneurship.

01:43 - 04.878 And the comment you made about microwave is very true

01:43 - 08.882 because that opened up whole new aspect for cable.

01:43 - 12.986 One of the largest cable operators in the business, TCI,

01:43 - 16.056 actually came out of out of MIT

01:43 - 18.258 microwave.

01:43 - 22.329 That was the beginning of TCI and the whole East

01:43 - 24.464 Coast up and down the East Coast

01:43 - 28.068 got into the microwave business from Atlantic City

01:43 - 30.737 on up and down with an outfit called PRISM.

01:43 - 32.839 And that was all microwave.

01:43 - 35.075 And that really opened up the industry

01:43 - 38.312 to more and more channels that were desirable channels,

01:43 - 41.014 not duplicates of the channels that were already on there.

01:43 - 43.817 So microwave had a big impact on cable

01:43 - 48.722 war and Fred Lee certainly did a good job with

01:43 - 53.260 well Penny can microwave pennies in the microwave yeah.

01:43 - 56.230 In lower New York it was in horseheads.

01:43 - 58.098 New York worth it?

01:43 - 59.866 Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

01:43 - 01.435 We're from Corning, New York.

01:44 - 03.904 We only have a couple of minutes left

01:44 - 05.439 and I want to get each of you

01:44 - 08.141 to talk a little bit about some of the people,

01:44 - 11.111 just a couple of the names of people who who helped you out

01:44 - 16.817 and helped you get through all the problems

01:44 - 17.851 you had to get through

01:44 - 21.388 and are not at this table today or who are no longer with us

01:44 - 23.590 and whose names should be mentioned.

01:44 - 24.992 George, I want to start

01:44 - 27.861 I got to think about that.

01:44 - 30.664 Someone that helped you, that's not at the table.

01:44 - 33.100 You think these names should we should not conclude this

01:44 - 35.135 discussion without talking about.

01:44 - 37.070 Oh, okay.

01:44 - 40.941 The fellow that helped me most was a gentleman

01:44 - 45.012 named Frank DeLuca, and he operated Schuylkill

01:44 - 49.049 Electric Distributors in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

01:44 - 50.751 You probably remember Frank.

01:44 - 52.486 He carried

01:44 - 55.722 me on his tab when I was bankrupt

01:44 - 59.059 and didn't know it until I could start to pay the bill.

01:44 - 02.496 And whenever I would run out of supplies, I go down and

01:45 - 07.434 Frank would give me another reel of RG

01:45 - 11.438 59 or some other equipment he might have

01:45 - 15.542 and I give him a check and say, Hold it on next week.

01:45 - 19.279 Then I use that wire and go out and make another connection.

01:45 - 21.648 Then I could make the payment to him.

01:45 - 24.384 So Frank, really carried me and

01:45 - 30.390 I think I owe my being able to still be in the cable business,

01:45 - 32.859 or at least as many years as I did the Frank

01:45 - 36.596 a couple of months ago.

01:45 - 40.734 I went to my dentist in State College and he mentioned that

01:45 - 43.970 Jim Palmer, who had hired me,

01:45 - 48.041 was in the day before and mentioned that

01:45 - 50.010 he had

01:45 - 54.314 probably six months to live, he had cancer

01:45 - 59.186 and so I went home and wrote Jim a real fine letter

01:46 - 05.025 because he hired me in spite of the fact that I had absolutely

01:46 - 08.628 no experience whatsoever in communications.

01:46 - 11.031 He didn't want anybody with experience.

01:46 - 13.367 I guess he he didn't want to retrain anybody.

01:46 - 16.002 Everybody around this table knows

01:46 - 18.705 that Jim was a very unique guy in many ways,

01:46 - 22.542 but he hired me and, gave me the opportunity.

01:46 - 25.979 And I've been very,

01:46 - 28.415 very fortunate, this wonderful ride.

01:46 - 32.386 And I certainly

01:46 - 33.587 and beholden to him.

01:46 - 36.156 And not only did he hire me, but when we left

01:46 - 37.624 and all these franchises

01:46 - 41.161 that I got were for Jim, you know, in Senate video.

01:46 - 43.163 And when we left, the former owned company

01:46 - 46.767 Jim on two occasions alone is $5 million.

01:46 - 50.036 And we didn't have to serve for two years.

01:46 - 53.073 And So really, I am indebted to him and

01:46 - 56.143 and hope that really there's some mistake and somehow

01:46 - 59.112 or other he can stay with us a lot longer than the six months

01:47 - 01.381 of Charlton

01:47 - 04.551 I had.

01:47 - 08.822 I had met many a person that I respected and helped me.

01:47 - 12.092 I have mentioned some of them before.

01:47 - 15.495 They were principals of the power company

01:47 - 19.800 and even the Pennsylvania Light Company, a division

01:47 - 22.903 vice president that was very helpful.

01:47 - 26.373 They had a had a selfish motive.

01:47 - 29.342 They wanted to get television rent notwithstanding.

01:47 - 33.580 They gave me tremendous help, local bank.

01:47 - 37.117 I had no credit, no reasonable credit.

01:47 - 40.420 And one of their directors

01:47 - 44.224 at that time was the chairman of the of the

01:47 - 45.992 Pennsylvania

01:47 - 49.162 Turnpike Commission, Tommy John Evans.

01:47 - 51.198 And I saw him.

01:47 - 52.666 He says, Bob, that's no problem.

01:47 - 55.035 You go in and talk to the cashier

01:47 - 57.337 and I'll assure you, get past.

01:47 - 00.273 He was chairman of the board.

01:48 - 05.612 These are all persons who I without their insistence,

01:48 - 08.415 without their help, without their friendship

01:48 - 11.551 I think I would have had a problem.

01:48 - 13.253 I owe my father.

01:48 - 18.692 He kept paying my little salary, but it was still a salary.

01:48 - 22.162 Whenever I wasn't really tending to the work I was doing.

01:48 - 23.630 Experimenting.

01:48 - 26.533 I owe him a lot and my mother.

01:48 - 29.436 But I

01:48 - 32.706 these are persons that personal persons that

01:48 - 34.841 really helped me get started.

01:48 - 38.011 It took me a year, year and a half to get over the hump.

01:48 - 42.449 And I can't think of any one else

01:48 - 45.218 at the present time that I am indebted to.

01:48 - 48.255 But thank you, Irene

01:48 - 51.758 and my sister and her husband around is $5,000

01:48 - 54.594 and that's how we got started in cable TV.

01:48 - 58.598 So I speak for them, Joe.

01:48 - 59.733 I agree with her.

01:48 - 03.403 And then I must give a lot of credit to George debacle

01:49 - 05.772 because we had different

01:49 - 08.575 problems in this and that and you talked to him

01:49 - 11.745 and knew there was a way to solve it in

01:49 - 15.649 and another one would be Jim Peters from

01:49 - 19.553 from Chicago National Bank.

01:49 - 21.988 He gave me my first big loan,

01:49 - 22.522 which I was

01:49 - 25.392 able to buy the Northeast Cable but George debacle.

01:49 - 28.495 Yolanda I remember that we had trouble in New York

01:49 - 30.931 and New Jersey that we were building the systems.

01:49 - 34.000 He came down and we fix it.

01:49 - 34.935 He knew how to do it.

01:49 - 37.470 And so he was quite a man.

01:49 - 38.471 Very good.

01:49 - 41.841 Well, well, there's one name that I'm sure has affected

01:49 - 43.009 everybody at this table,

01:49 - 45.345 and that's the

01:49 - 48.181 governor of Pennsylvania,

01:49 - 49.649 Milton Chap.

01:49 - 51.918 And he was my guy.

01:49 - 53.353 I worked for him.

01:49 - 56.022 He's the greatest boss I ever had. And

01:49 - 57.991 I'm not so sure

01:49 - 00.093 that this table would exist if it wasn't for him,

01:50 - 03.396 because in reality, milk

01:50 - 06.399 literally created the equipment

01:50 - 10.136 which got this whole industry started

01:50 - 15.542 straight.

01:50 - 19.713 Every operator who's sitting on this table is included

01:50 - 23.683 among those that helped me get my start.

01:50 - 25.952 They were all pioneers

01:50 - 30.256 too. Others to be mentioned.

01:50 - 33.593 I just mentioned Milton Sharpe.

01:50 - 38.398 The other was Martin Malarkey, who organized the National

01:50 - 43.637 Community Television Association and arranged to get me.

01:50 - 49.643 I hired his general counsel for $200 a month.

01:50 - 51.878 I guess I have to mention George Burton.

01:50 - 54.714 Well, the Park of Shoes, he was my boss.

01:50 - 56.883 And Yolanda also

01:50 - 59.986 helped me a great deal.

01:50 - 05.025 And then, of course, he was my right hand.

01:51 - 06.893 John, you get the last word.

01:51 - 09.629 Well, you know, this is a very

01:51 - 12.432 sensitive and as you know,

01:51 - 15.368 sometime if we ever had another

01:51 - 18.905 period in our lives where we can gather,

01:51 - 23.677 I just like to focus on people and personalities because.

01:51 - 27.213 There's so many things that we didn't cover and

01:51 - 30.917 ID like to acknowledge and pay respect

01:51 - 32.852 because along the way,

01:51 - 35.321 when you take this journey, there's so many people

01:51 - 37.924 that touch your lives and mean so much,

01:51 - 42.228 and it's not fair to say signal so,

01:51 - 46.566 but I will say this, you know, yes, on a general basis,

01:51 - 48.601 you know,

01:51 - 51.271 my brother goes there with my partner

01:51 - 55.008 and supported for many years and certainly my sons now that

01:51 - 58.578 have carried on the business and done a wonderful job.

01:51 - 02.082 But if I'm going to focus in on the people that have

01:52 - 05.218 no longer among us and disease,

01:52 - 07.520 I think a little safer ground.

01:52 - 09.022 And so

01:52 - 13.393 ones names

01:52 - 16.396 I would mention would be Milt Sharp because

01:52 - 21.901 he was truly our general for many years,

01:52 - 26.005 led the way we believed in him and he did vendor

01:52 - 28.575 financing and everything else that went along with it,

01:52 - 31.778 you know, name that wouldn't

01:52 - 35.048 mean much to hardly anybody in this country.

01:52 - 39.886 We will never make the headlines was Joe Kahn will

01:52 - 43.857 that would come calling on us month after month

01:52 - 47.227 and try to solve our problems and give us that x

01:52 - 50.296 ray equipment just the salesman the represented general.

01:52 - 51.865 But I tell you,

01:52 - 53.633 he was a blessing when he came around

01:52 - 55.969 because we had so many problems and that doesn't

01:52 - 00.039 mean at all the general team and everything else that.

01:53 - 02.709 But that was special.

01:53 - 04.878 Then I think of John Walton,

01:53 - 07.647 who when I was depressed and down and out

01:53 - 11.851 and discouraged, John Wilson would be there and always

01:53 - 15.221 tell me why there was a future in cable television

01:53 - 18.892 and why he believed in it and how passionate he was.

01:53 - 22.162 And by the way, if you want to sell your system, I'll buy it.

01:53 - 25.131 And that was encouraging and reassuring.

01:53 - 29.736 And you know, in the bar codes, because how hard they fought

01:53 - 34.440 with so much integrity and and believed in a cause

01:53 - 38.945 and believed what was right and just justice,

01:53 - 41.714 they fought so hard for this industry.

01:53 - 44.851 And I have to think of Irving Kahn, who was a wonderful

01:53 - 47.086 visionary that

01:53 - 49.122 took this

01:53 - 52.625 industry and to places we never thought of.

01:53 - 56.196 And lastly, I have to think of buildings who

01:53 - 58.131 to godfather.

01:53 - 01.968 This industry introduced so many different ways

01:54 - 05.438 to do things in this industry and took a risk.

01:54 - 07.941 Some were good and some were bad,

01:54 - 09.943 but he was always a leader

01:54 - 13.046 in the tallest tree and a force in way of mission.

01:54 - 16.549 And so those little notes you, Bill, would write me

01:54 - 18.818 and the phone you would get to encourage me,

01:54 - 20.820 and then I would read the headlines

01:54 - 23.523 where he started a brokerage firm or he sold a system.

01:54 - 28.194 All that led to great support.

01:54 - 31.965 So I can't, you know, and people that are still living.

01:54 - 34.801 I wanted, you know, the trade turners and

01:54 - 39.339 and John Malone's

01:54 - 40.073 name is

01:54 - 41.207 I could go on and on

01:54 - 43.343 and I wish I had time to give them all credit.

01:54 - 44.043 God bless him.

01:54 - 46.813 All the little bankers, all the big investors,

01:54 - 49.282 all the people that made this industry what it is, I

01:54 - 52.452 can't thank them enough.

01:54 - 53.653 I think we'll end on that note.

01:54 - 55.421 I thank you all for being here. Thank you very much.

01:54 - 56.756 We'll have to do this.

01:54 - 59.225 My pleasure.